Luxe at Meridian
  (formerly Lexington Manor)

Renters Beware From: Ron_et.al. Date posted: 7/11/2008 Years at this apartment: 1995 - 2008 6 responses   Many tenants at the Lexington Manor view Bascom Holdings (the new owner) and Pinnacle Management (the new management company) as outrageous, callous, deceptive, illegal and greedy. Tenants here are rented to without being given adequate disclosure of serious infrastructural faults of this property. Many serious faults are not disclosed at all. Some of those faults are as follows: 1. Fire code violations; 2. Health code violations; 3. Building code violations; 4. Clean air violations; 5. Safety hazards; 6. Pandemic insect infestations; 7. Rotten and faulty plumbing; 8. Pandemic toxic mold and rot; 9. Toxic and disturbed asbestos ; 10. Serious moisture damage; 11. Inoperable ventilation system; 12. Faulty roof; 13. Seasonal flooding. The landlord's rent increase notices and procedures are frequently improper. They have terminated tenant's premises without notice. Legitimate long term tenants have returned to their premises to find that the landlord has removed the locks to their doors and left them wide open with the tenant's property removed, all without proper or any notice whatsoever. Tenants have been bullied by the landlord to pay rent they legally do not owe. Elderly tenants, under rental assistance, have been taken advantage of to pay more rent than they actually owe. The leases are incredibly unilateral and loaded with subtle and not so subtle clauses that tenants often regret later. They increase rents now as if this building is in a like new and disruption free condition. Far from it! Some rents for units here have been increased by as much as forty percent (40%) in less than a year. And some of those increases have been on units with no improvements nor any upgrades to them whatsoever. It is painful to imagine what the rents will be raised to after their proposed improvements to the building. All the tenants have been living in a "construction zone" for over a year. Tenants will suffer continued disruptions, or worse from this "construction zone", for another year or more. Tenants suffer frequent and major disruptions of their lives for the arbitrary convenience of management and renovation crews. Many tenants have each been served dozens of formal notices for work crews to enter into their units for construction purposes, but often no one shows up. And illegal, inconsiderate entries are made by work crews without proper notice. Tenants have been coerced into nothing less than free labor to relocate furnishings for renovations and to clean up the crew's messes. Legitimate maintenance requests by tenants are frequently ignored. This is especially true in units not yet refurbished. Seasonal flooding is as high as a foot deep in the garage, in the elevators, and in the electrical rooms, therefore an electrocution hazard. This flooding is not caused by an "act of God", but instead it is caused by faulty construction of this property and of adjoining properties. If the rotten plumbing is ever replaced then that replacement necessitates that your kitchen or bathroom will be extensively torn up for extended periods of time. Until the rotten plumbing is replaced expect to suffer frequent plumbing related problems. Those problems include noisy and seized hot water pipes, foul tasting off color water, easily clogged garbage disposal pipes, stopped up rusted out pipes that break, and flooding of your unit from the floors above you. Often the flooding is laden with highly caustic drain cleaner which will linger in your unit for months. The plumbing often has squeals and vibrations and lack full flow. The toilets often spit back at you. Extensive water damage problems persist due to the poor condition of the roof and its drainage. Re-tarring and patching of the roof are not comprehensive fixes of the roof. The water damage, rot, toxic mold, and disturbed asbestos are frequently and illegally masked with bleach, with spackle and are painted over. But it often returns with a vengeance after you move in. The toxic mold winds up in the furniture, the clothing, the bedding, and in the tenant's bodies. Disturbed asbestos is required by statute to be abated by licensed asbestos abatement contractors, but that is usually not done here. For years the majority of entire floors of asbestos ceilings here have been officially declared sufficiently disturbed to require abatement, but none have been abated. They typically paint and patch it illegally. Nonetheless the underlying cause (water seepage) of the disturbed asbestos usually continues to erode the asbestos after you move in. It falls off in clumps and in fine dust. Once the disturbed asbestos winds up in your lungs it can remain in your lungs for life. It can cause cancers like mesothelioma and other pathologies. The pandemic insect infestation du jour in the building is ants. Cockroaches have also been a problem. This old building is a high rise with vertical plumbing tunnels, drafty and smelly especially during the summer. The plumbing tunnels run vertically thru all units. There are holes galore in the walls to those tunnels especially hidden behind bathroom and kitchen cabinets. The plumbing tunnels are like turnpikes for insects to freely travel throughout all units. Laundry rooms have poor lighting, and some have broken and gaping garbage chute doors that children could fall through. A fire hazard and foul odors, especially in the summer result. They have started charging garbage, sewer and water utilities on top of our rent here. This is simply a "back door" way to advertise lower rents, or conversely to effectively extort more rent. The prorated portion of these utilities is not metered to tenants personally like their electricity is. Instead it is prorated to tenants. The prorating of these utilities does not take into account that some units here have large numbers of occupants that far exceed their official occupancy. So unless a tenant has a large number of occupants in his/her apartment then, in effect, that tenant is paying for a portion of other tenant's showers, toilet usage, cooking, garbage, and such. As to security: Know that this building has a history of drugs in it, and drug dealing out of it, car prowls, burglaries and theft. Poor lighting in areas. Poor control of master keys and exterior door keys has resulted in burglaries and thefts here. Over time the entrance door keys and master keys proliferate into un-bonded, unauthorized hands. It has been several years since either the master keys or exterior door keys have been changed. Further, over the past year, certain exterior doors have been jimmied, broken, or propped open as often as not. In the past this has been the result of drug dealing out of the building, including much of the related crime that follows that. It has been years since all exterior doors have been secure at the same time. Stay tuned to this web site: The tenants are organizing for a likely class action and other actions against Bascom Holdings (the owner) and against Pinnacle Management (the management company) . This organizing activity will include written notices that inform all present tenants and many past tenants of these actions, their rights, their damages and web sites for them to post on. This organizing will result in an up coming plethora of independent reviews on this site from past and present tenants. Tenants that would like to see them boiled in oil . Also look for an immediately forthcoming forum for tenants of these two companies. Plus look for an upcoming website dedicated to this purpose soon. Look for all of the above for this property (Lexington Manor), and for the adjacent property (The Galleria). And look for all of the above soon to be expanded to all properties owned by Bascom and to all properties managed by Pinnacle. For more details and contacts please see the Lexington Postings on the Thin Walls Talk Forum on this Web Site. Namely http://thinwallstalk.com/forum/forum.jspa'forumID=4105 Beware when dealing with either Pinnacle Management or Bascom Holdings at any of their properties. Where there is one "cockroach", per se, there are plenty more.

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