What a nightmare. I am happy to say that my fiance and I started looking and purchased a house and were well on our way out when...

At 4am our entire building's fire alarm went off! We thought it was the battery in the alarm in our apartment, but after ripping that out of the wall, we noticed it was the entire building's alarm. We got our coats on over our pajamas and headed outside where everyone else was standing...soon after the fire department, EMS, and police show up at the apartment, checked each unit and no fire. They drain the hydrant lines because of the recent replacement of sprinkler heads in each unit, and after an hour, we get to go back into our apartments, listen to random beeps while the alarm is set properly again. While standing outside, I was made aware by one of the long time residents that this had happened before. I sent an email to the office, and the head maintenance guy responded stating that it had happened several times before and he would pass along my suggestion (to send a note to the tenants of our building letting them know what happened) to management. Never saw that letter. After almost a month, the alarms for our entire building went off at 3am. Yes, again. We were 2 of 3 people who got dressed and went outside, as you should when an alarm is sounding. The fire department took well over 20 mintues to get to us, with no sirens this time! They were there for approx 45 minutes before the alarms were completely turned off. I sent an email to the office stating the facts, and requested that we be let out of our lease a month early as we did not feel safe any longer. After 24 hours of not hearing anything..I went to speak with the very smug property management. She was less than compassionate,helpful, and extremely rude. She simply stated that they could not be accountable for acts of God and it all goes back to elementary school. If the alarm goes off you leave the building. She was less than concerned for her tentants. The explanation of acts of God was that the first time a critter got into the box and then the second time lightning hit the box. Where is this box at that it would be accessible by critters and lightning. Who knows. Our last day in the apartment I spoke with the friendly maintenance guy walking through the grounds and not mentioning my conversation with "management" but only that we were moving out due to the fact that we felt it was no longer safe. He said that everything should be fine now; the first time it went off was because a wire was shorted out and the second time it went off was because the person replaced the board but not the shorted wire from the original alarm. Way too many stories to keep up with.

I would NOT RECOMMEND ANYONE consider even looking here. There are nicer apartments with better property management in this area.

User Responses
From: supermerth	Date: 09/06/2007
My partner and I lived in Apt. 217 for a little over a year. During that time the alarms did go off twice. We were also told different reasons for the problem (Management told us that some kids had pulled the fire alarm.) but only after we spoke to the maintenance crew did we finally get a real answer. (They explained the wire and board thing to us as well.) I guess you missed the actual fire that took place after the two false alarms. It was up on the third story balcony facing the parking lot. And crazy enough, NO alarms went off this time. Just the billowing black smoke and the loud knocking on our door from a neighbor told us something was wrong and to get out of the building. We were especially concerned because the fire hydrant by our apartment had been covered by a plastic trash bag for MONTHS because of some sort of plumbing problem. Fortunately, our apartment was on the first floor on the other end of the building. After all of this, we decided it was time to buy a house and get out of that place.

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