One word summary: Dump

Both the best place (location) and worst place (condition) that we have ever lived in.

From the outside Gables Central Park looks like a nice complex. It is conveniently located next to the Austin Heart Hospital, a Central Market grocery store, and Central Park. A post office, various small shops, a dry cleaner, lots of doctors, dentists, and specialists, and Seton Hospital are within a short walk. If you don't own a car and you're willing to walk up to a mile you can get to several drug stores and the shops and restaurants at The Triangle. There is easy access to bus lines on both Guadalupe and Lamar. Unfortunately, upon closer inspection you will start noticing the bad things.

When we moved, in the first thing we discovered was that the air conditioner was broken - and it was the middle of August. It took over a week to get it fixed properly and I'm the one who suggested that perhaps the coolant level was low (which it was). As we were moving in I found that the insides of the rather cheap-looking wood cabinets were stained and dirty-looking from years of use. I had to put shelf paper down in all the cabinets before I would even think about putting my dishes in them. Also, as I was cleaning everything (as I always do when we move in) I noticed how worn, scratched, and stained all the countertops and fixtures were. The countertops looked like they're covered in cheap formica and the fixtures (faucets, etc.) looked like the really cheap stuff you'd get at a discount store. My husband had two goes at the kitchen sink with Brasso to get it looking halfway decent. After a couple of days I had a 9-item maintenance list and I continued finding problems over the next few weeks (broken dishwasher, leaky faucets, buzzing lights, etc.). Fortunately, the maintenance guys were pretty responsive and generally pretty good at fixing most things, plus they're very friendly. Oh, and another thing, there's paint layer after paint layer on all the molding and shelving to the point where it's kind of tacky, so anything you put on a painted shelf tends to stick to it. And whoever did the painting and touchup was very sloppy because there were paint and caulk splatters all over the carpet.

After a while I noticed that the breezeway outside the apartment always looked dirty and stained with greasy spots and bird poop (that had obviously been there for a long time) and had little bits of trash blowing around in it. The management had just had the entire complex painted in August, so I asked if they were going to powerwash the breezeways since they looked so gross. I never really got an answer to that and complained a few more times about how bad the breezeways looked. (It doesn't help that people leave trash bags outside their apartments - not in cans - contrary to the trash rules.) Eventually I saw some guy make a half-hearted attempt to leaf-blow the breezeway, but he did a pathetic job so it continued to look bad. Imagine coming home from work and having to walk through a long hallway of filth to get to your *home*. At the time we moved out about a year later it looked even worse than when we moved in.

And, speaking of bird-poop, pigeons infest the garage because it has great nesting and perching spots so our car was constantly splattered with bird-poop. There was a prime nesting spot directly over our parking spot which could have been easily covered with some chicken wire, but after complaining several times nothing was done to fix the problem.

When the warm weather hit in spring we again found that our air conditioner did not work properly. Once again the coolant level was low. To me this indicates a leak, but apparently nobody was interested in fixing the actual problem. They just band-aided it by putting in more coolant. Our apartment was still warm and very humid. Even though the system ran practically constantly all afternoon it couldn't get the apartment below 73 degrees until late evening. A little while later during a regular maintenance inspection a maintenance guy opened the ceiling panel access to the HVAC unit and a stream of water ran out. The next day I discovered mildew (that had obviously been there quite a while) growing all over two air vents which had to be removed and replaced.

On top of all the above-mentioned problems we were frequently plagued with bug infestations (little black beetles, fruit flies, etc.).

Bottom line: Gables Central Park charges luxury apartment prices for student quality apartments that are in dire need of refurbishment. I recommend you look elsewhere until this complex undergoes a complete overhaul.

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