Review for River Pointe At Den Rock Park Apartments

River Pointe at Den Rock – Here’s my summary, then I’ll get to the details:

Apartment buildings: Fair
Individual Apartments: Good
Maintenance: Fair
Location: Fair
Amenities: Fair
Grounds: Fair
Management: Poor, very very POOR.

The condition of the apartment buildings themselves was decent. As mentioned by a previous reviewer, the management would hire carpet cleaners whose job it was to leave the place smelling like wet dog for about a week. However, my apartment was in good condition when I moved in, and rarely had any maintenance issues.

The grounds were kept up, but the management never told anyone when the landscapers were coming. Additionally, landscapers they hired, on the cheap, no doubt, had no compunctions about using their hypersonic leaf-blowers to shoot debris and gravel at any car whose owner had the misfortune to have nowhere to go on that particular day.

The trash facilities were quite limited – one dumpster-compactor that would fill up on most weekends by Sunday morning – when, of course, there was no maintenance personnel on-site to compact the trash. By Sunday evening, there was a mountain of trash on each side of the dumpster. Lovely aroma in the summer.

Parking availability fluctuated, but suffice it to say that the spots, even when available, were too small, leading many people to ignore the painted lines entirely, leading to parking chaos most of the time.

Most apartment complexes - including all the ones I’ve ever lived in – pay for the heat and water so that you don’t have to, so it’s included in the rent. Not so at River Pointe – you’ll now pay for both, although I only paid for gas at the time I lived there.

In one memorable instance, the management hired a contractor to repair some of the exterior siding and trim. The contractor started work at 8AM – ON A SATURDAY. Imagine my delight (NOT) at being woken up at 8:30 on a SATURDAY MORNING to a worker using a hammer and crowbar to pry siding off my building, RIGHT OUTSIDE MY WINDOW – and I lived on the second floor!! What kind of management schedules that kind of work on a Saturday morning, one of only two days out of the week that working people can sleep in late??? Oh, I have more about the management in the paragraphs to come…

As also mentioned by a previous reviewer, many of the residents are college students who, since they don’t have to live in a dorm, do not think they have to abide by any sort of neighborly standards with regard to noise. My first upstairs neighbor was just occasionally heavy-footed; the next one was an aficionado of the current subwoofer craze, and played bass-heavy music every night. This is not the kind of apartment complex I’d move to if I had children.

The location of the apartment complex was a mixture of the nice and the maddening. On the one hand, it was right next to a city park, with walking paths, the Shawsheen River, rock climbing, and forested land. On the other hand, highway noise was constant, being only hundreds of feet from I-495. Additionally, the complex is situated on busy Rt 114, which is packed with traffic every morning. Good luck trying to make a left out of the complex to get to 495 – your best bet is to make a right, and then make a left into the parking lot of the shopping center across the street to get you headed back in the right direction. Even with that option, getting that short distance in traffic will take you 5-10 minutes during the morning rush. Same goes for weekends, when all the shoppers are out – although having a Kohls, Market Basket, and several other stores across the street may seem really convenient, tens of thousands of your neighbors from nearby towns agree, and will be on the very road you need to use to get out of your complex. Good luck.

Quite aside from the crappy road situation is the town – Lawrence. After I moved in to River Pointe, I went to get car insurance; when I told the agent where I lived, she winced, and told me that I’d pay $200 less per year if I lived in the next town over – North Andover. Living in Lawrence immediately jacks your insurance rates unbelievably. And if you think Lawrence, MA has any redeeming qualities – don’t. It doesn’t. On a good day, it resembles a Third-World shantytown.

Twice in the past two years, Rt 114 was inaccessible for days at a time due to major storm flooding of the Shawsheen River, which most of the year barely qualifies as a creek. The first year, the National Guard evacuated us. I was mercifully out of town the second year.

Now, on to the management. This property is owned by Equity Residential, but managed locally. In fact, the first manager I encountered, when I moved in, said that the managers can live on-site, free of rent, so that they can experience what the regular residents experience. This initially made me feel good about my choice; however, this feel-good moment lasted less than a year. In the time that I lived in the complex, Oct. 2004 to June 2007, the management personnel changed at least twice a year. It’s impossible to build a sense of community with this sort of management attrition; the managers do not feel like a part of the community, and thus do not care about resident issues or concerns.

Take package delivery, for example. Most packages end up at the main office, since UPS, FedEx and DHL can’t get in to each building to deliver packages. The notes left by the delivery personnel were frequently lost due to wind or rain, since they had to be stuck on an outside surface, and to top it off, the managers couldn’t be bothered to let you know that you had a package waiting for you at the office. But wait – there’s more. I picked up packages almost every month, on average, and I’d say that during 2 out of every three visits to the management office, THERE WAS NOBODY THERE to open the door! Nobody to talk to, nobody to answer questions, nobody there to accept my rent check, nobody there to hand me my package – and this was during NORMAL BUSINESS HOURS. This means that the office was sorely understaffed; I can generously assume that at least one manager is out showing an apartment to a prospective renter, but then there should be at least one person left at the office. This was a rare to non-existent occurrence.

Speaking of normal business hours, towards the end of my residency there, that’s all they had – 9AM to 5PM. Think of it – if you needed to visit the office in person for any reason, most especially to pick up a package, you had to take time out of your own work day to do it – and even then, THE OFFICE WOULD MOST OFTEN BE EMPTY!! And what kind of apartment complex doesn’t have weekend office hours, if only to serve the needs of apartment hunters – prospective future residents?? Oh, for the first year, they had Saturday hours, at least – but those disappeared, and even when they existed, the office would inexplicably close early. Not that a manager was off showing an apartment – they’d leave a note saying the office was closed. No advance notice, no nothing, no managers.

I believe that their computers managed the apartment complex more so than the people did; the computers spit out form letters for the various administrative necessities, such as lease renewal, etc. Once, after a rent increase (which was not that high and not unexpected), I received a letter stating that my rent was past due. The reality of the situation was that I owed a little more money for the new lease rate since it kicked in during the middle of the month, which is when my lease expired. The computer noticed what I have already paid and spit out a past-due notice, which the “helpful” management dutifully passed on to me. Aghast at having received a past-due rent letter, I went to the office in person to discuss the matter; the manager made it seem like no big deal, not feeling my pain at all.

The crowning moment was when I moved out. I should preface this section by saying that I’m partly to blame for this situation, but I am describing the situation to illustrate the incompetent, unfair, and unethical behavior of the management staff that is continually foisted upon the residents of River Pointe by Equity Residential.

Not long before the expiration of my lease in April 2007, I went in person to the office to verbally inform management of my intention not to renew my lease, instead choosing to stay in my apartment (month-to-month) until the end of June 2007, at which time I'd be moving out to live with my new wife in our new home. The management verbally acknowledged my stated intentions, and I went on my way.

On July 1st 2007, after having moved out of my apartment, I again visited the office in person to return my keys and access card. It was at this time that I was asked to sign a notice of intent to vacate my apartment. This form was not presented to me during my previous visit in which I verbally stated my intentions. The form was printed with a move-out date of August 1, 2007, and the management told me that because of this, and the lack of prior WRITTEN notice of intent, I would be responsible for additional rent monies.

Feeling cornered and worried about future legal action, I signed the form. A few weeks later I sent a letter to the apartment management in an attempt to appeal to their sensitivity to the chaotic year I’d had (death in the family, marriage, relocation, etc.), also reminding them that they could have presented me with the form when I first visited them to state my intentions. The only contact I received from them was a bill for the additional rent monies, minus my security deposit.

I strongly suspect that the management deliberately neglected to present me with this form, even knowing what my intentions were, so that they could squeeze another $1400 from me without me living there. Sure, I screwed up by not taking care of the written notice myself, but if you’re the apartment manager, and you can help one of your residents by presenting them with a simple form that takes care of the written notice well in advance, shouldn’t you do it? That’s like a cop who watches you park in a no-parking zone, smiles and says hello to you, and then writes you a parking ticket after you’ve walked away from the car!!

I’m sure that part of their argument would be that without prior written notice, they’d lose money by not knowing when the apartment would be available for the next renter, and lose money until they got a new renter into your old apartment. However, I contend that they are not losing ANY money on me; the apartment market is tight in MA, and I was already month-to-month for two months, which meant they got an extra $250 a month from me above and beyond my normal rent. Finally, I lived in my apartment for a solid two-and-a-half-years-plus, so it was never unoccupied, and was a steady source of rent for that period of time.

My recommendation is to stay away from River Pointe at Den Rock in Lawrence, MA. There are other complexes nearby in Andover, North Andover (Royal Crest), and other surrounding towns that offer similar, if not better, conditions and amenities, and are more convenient locations. I have no doubt that the management at those places cares more about their residents than do the musical-chairs-managers at River Pointe.