I live in Capitol Places I, not II, but unfortunately there is no listing for I (but close enough).

Let me give you my unbiased view on this apartment building in form of Pros and Cons. This is way longer than I thought it would be but I guess if I were looking for an apartment, I'd be happy to see a lengthy, detailed review rather than a short blurb.

Pros:

1. The building and its units--gorgeous. I've been stopped a countless number of times by random people as I am opening the gate to the building, telling me, "Wow, what a cool place to live." The building's architecture is stunning, the high ceilings are awesome, and of course, the spiral staircases made of iron in the loft units are wonderful. I could go on and on about how beautiful the building is--the high rent reflects it.

2. It's secure. Not only does the building have a locked gate, but it also has a locked front door as well. Sometimes people will carelessly leave the front gate open by mistake, but you're always safe because the front door is spring-loaded and automatically locks itself.

3. You're right downtown. I love being able to walk wherever I go. I'm a USC student and the walk to class is about 20 minutes, but it's a nice walk since it's straight down Main Street and then right through the capitol lawn. I love the walk. It's a block to the Richland County Public Library and the Columbia Museum of Art is literally right across the street. When you move in, you also get a free membership for The Factory, which is also a block away. You're also within a block of several restaurants and bars.

4. I haven't had to deal with management much but from what I have experienced, they were very courteous and professional.

Cons:

1. Noise. I won't get into specific details because I still live here, but the walls are paper-thin. I can hear neighbors of mine that live all the way down the hall whenever they come home. I hear every conversation my neighbors have. It's not that everyone that lives here is loud--it's just that the high ceilings minimal carpeting poorly soundproofed walls let sound bounce and echo wherever it pleases. It's unfortunate, because the building is awesome. Oddly, if you live on the ground floor, you will rarely hear your upstairs neighbor because the ceiling is solid cement, but be prepared to hear every little thing that happens on your own floor.

2. There are only 2 sets of washers and dryers in the laundry room and 30 units in the building. This isn't usually a big deal... whenever I do laundry, both sets of machines are unoccupied but occasionally one person will decide to do about 10 loads of laundry at once and the laundry room will be unavailable for an entire day. I don't really blame management for this because the laundry room is too small to fit another set of machines. The machines are also kind of expensive. The dryer almost never dries your clothes in one cycle and if you have a large load, it can sometimes take 3 cycles ($3.75 total for the dryer $1.25 for the washer--$5 for one load). AFAIK, the units do not have W/D hookups either so you will either have to maintain an overwhelming stock of quarters and pay through the nose for laundry or be inconvenienced by having to do laundry outside of the building.

3. The parking is a little weird. You can pay $75/month for a garage space but the garage is a block away, so it's not worth it. You can also pay $15/month for a city street parking pass that lets you park at metered spots but you aren't guaranteed a parking space obviously. If you don't walk to work and work normal business hours, this really isn't a problem most of the time, but occasionally, there will be some event going on at the Marriott next door and people will steal all the parking spaces in front of the building. Weekend parking is also hard to find because people go the art museum and more people are home, but at most, you'll have to park about a block away, nothing major.

4. If you have a loft unit, your bathroom(s) will be upstairs. I don't really have a huge problem with running up and down a spiral staircase all the time, but I guess some people may. Sometimes it's annoying when I am upstairs and go downstairs and then realize I need something that is upstairs, but I guess you can apply that logic to any multi-storied dwelling. It's mostly annoying when you're sick though and you have the kitchen downstairs and the bathroom bedroom(s) upstairs and you're too weak to climb the stairs repeatedly.

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