Review for Aero Flats At Stapleton Apartments

My wife and I lived in the Aero Flats apartments from May of '06 to May of '07, so we've had some experience with the place...

We were first drawn in by the outside appearance of the building, as it had the same 'modern' feel that is so prominent in the rest of the Stapleton area. As we toured the grounds and eventually the apartment we moved into, we were informed of all the fantastic features of the grounds; everything from the wide open courtyard and swimming pool area to the gated parking areas and security.

Well... the security is a joke. None of the control access doors to the buildings ever work. They are either perpetully open, or your control access key fob's never work (my wife and I both had to have our access fob's replaced twice due to a malfunction). The site hires an outside security firm to handle control of the grounds on nights and weekends, and while we happened across one friendly and helpful security guard, the rest were either too busy looking at porn on the computers in the office (yes, we actually caught one of them masturbating in the security office) or hanging out with their friends and smoking (presumably pot, as the air reeked of it) at the swimming pool on summer nights. The "gated" community is the same as the access doors, it's always broken and the gates are either always open, or never let you in. The management claim to have one of the safest underground parking areas for apartments in Stapleton, and while nothing specifically happened to our vehicles, at least two of our floor-neighbors had their cars broken into in the underground parking area of the complex.

The management and office staff (save for Margalie - who has gone on to a new position at a different site) were always incredibly rude and never helpful, especially the manager Elvia. After living in the apartment for two weeks, we were informed that the office staff had made a mistake in our lease paperwork, and we were asked to come back in and resign new paperwork (extending our lease) and asked to pay an additional cost of close to $200 to cover their mistakes. My wife fought tooth and nail with the management, claiming that we had already signed our lease paperwork, that it was not our fault that they had made a mistake and that we were not going to pay the additional costs. After fighting for nearly a week, Margalie stepped in and informed us that she would take care of everything, as they had all of our signed paperwork on file, and that it truly was not our fault for the mistake. When having problems with our control access key fob's (see the reference about security above), we were rudely told that it was our fault for their failure, and the management assumed that we had been intentionally scanning our key fob's over a checkout station at the local King Soopers store, and informed us that we would have to pay for their replacements. Only after mutliple other residents began complaining of the same issue, were we given replacements key fob's for the site.

The maintenance of the buildings and apartments was nearly non-existent. After having a problem with our kitchen sink, a maintenance ticket was placed to have someone come in and repair problem; my wife had to take a day off of work due to the scheduled time set up from the management. The maintenance staff never showed up during this time, and we had to wait another 2 days before our sink was repaired. Multiple times during the winter months, the boilers for both buildings went out, leaving all the residents in the complex with no hot water. The situation was resolved, but only after they had to turn the water to both buildings off for two days to replace the boilers (again in the winter months). There always seemed to be a problem with our bathroom, from the sink clogging up due to bad pipe-setting, the shower curtan rod that always fell out of the wall or the patch-job paint and sealant peeling from the tub while showering or cleaning. I will say though, that the maintenance staff itself was incredibly friendly and helpful, and in most cases resolved the issues presented immediately.

The common areas and grounds at the site could be rated GOOD at best. The courtyard has a massive drainage problem that always left standing water in the grass, and was still not resolved by the time we left. The swimming pool, while nice for the most part experienced heating problems, as well as broken lights that left glass floating in the water for days before the maintenance staff was able to clean it. While the common sitting room/cyber lounge was nice, it was always a mess; the computers were always in use beyond the advised time limit, the printer never worked and the room itself was hardly ever cleaned. The site has what appears to be a nice movie viewing room with a large projection screen, but from what I could tell, it seemed to be off limits to anyone but the staff, as every resident I talked to was unable to use the room. The workout room had incredibly nice and updated equipment and was spacious, but looked directly out onto an area of the courtyard used commonly by the pet dogs on site as a restroom.

All in all, living at Aero Flats was a learning experience. I guess that you could say we were young and jaded when we moved in, and were captured by the allure and promise of the outside appearance and advertising. The apartments, buildings and staff failed miserably to live up to the expectations and are ultimately what drove us away from the site. But hey... at least Stapleton was nice.