I lived in the Left Bank while I was attending graduate school at Penn. I thought the location and building were perfect: just on the edge of campus, but still close to Center City. Although it was pricey, I thought it was worth it. It definitely was not worth it.

I have had a lot of problems in this building. First, the most important one: During July of 2003, someone who worked in the building (someone with a key) went into my apartment and stole jewelry from my apartment. Thankfully I had renter's insurance because management was not helpful at all and told me that this was the first time they had heard about someone's apartment getting broken into. When a detective came over later to survey the situation, he told me that I was the 4th person in the building to report stuff stolen.

Second, in September of 2003, the sprinkler in the apartment across the hall from me malfunctioned and they could not turn it off (this was also at 4AM). When we came back from being exacuated (since the sprinkler set off the fire alarm), I found my front hall area and my kitchen completely flooded with a couple of inches of water. Maintenance vacuumed the water up with a wet vac, but you couldn't get all of the water dried up and when wet carpet dries, it stinks. For few days, I was living in my bedroom because the kitchen, living room, and hall stunk until maintenance came in and shampooed the carpet twice.

Okay, so those incidents were two big problems. Here are some other problems: The dishwashers were terrible and would spray bits of food on the glasses on the top rack and would dry the crusted food on the glasses. The toilets constantly malfunctioned (which other people have also complained about and the guy who did a walk through with me when I moved in warned me about). The walls are extremely thin. I could hear the people next door sneezing, coughing, and watching TV. The window in my bedroom leaked when it rained hard and although I complained about it, no one ever came to fix it. The garbage disposal was deafening.

The parking situation was bad. I chose to pay $135 to park on the quasi-outside parking lot. However, even though you are paying for parking, on the upper, outside level, you don't have access to the shopping/luggage carts. So if you bought groceries or anything heavy, you would have to park in your spot, walk into the building and to the first floor lobby (in this building which is the length of a city block, it is over a half of a block to get to the lobby) and check out the cart in the lower garage. Walk the cart back to the 2nd floor where the lot is and leave it in inside vestibule (because there were 3 stairs and no ramp out to the outside parking, so you couldn't get the cart to the car). Carry your stuff to the cart and take the cart to your apartment, unload and walk it all the way back downstairs to the lobby. My apartment was on the opposite end of the building, so all in all it was like a 0.4 mile walk to bring you groceries to your apartment.

Also, the people who lived in the apartment were so unfriendly. They went out of their way not to talk to you in the halls or the elevator. Some of them were also extremely rude and inconsiderate. Maybe it's a Philly thing, but I have lived in an apartment before the Left Bank and I am living in another apartment now (both of which are not in Philly) and people are extremely friendly and neighborly.

Like other people of have said, the management was bad. When I received my last lease renewal, there was a 10% increase even though I could count at least 10 empty apartments on my hall alone. They were rude and unhelpful, and the new property manager, Melissa loves rules! Right after Christmas, she sent out a memo saying that if anyone had stuff like wreaths, doormats, etc. outside their door after one week, she would confiscate your belongings.

The one really good thing about the building was the doormen/concierege staff: Eddie, Fran, and Curtis were so nice and so helpful. They helped me with whatever I needed and were always good to me. I have missed them since I moved.

Anyway, thanks for reading (if you had made it this far). I really expected good stuff from this building and I was sorely disappointed.

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