This place is great, nice and secluded but 1m away from the stonypoint complex, a few restaurants(mcdee's is infested tho) and a ukrops(supermarket), surrounding area is nice too. Again the neighborhood is great, nice view of the shared river(small lake), lots of ducks in the summer.
but if you can find a comparable neighborhood stay away from this horrendous place. i was renting here before they came under the current management(previously it was summit properties). and let me tell you it has declined 10fold since. For one the rent increases $100 every 2 years, and is one of the most expensive rents anywhere. The apartments are old, and very old, aside from the very cheap complex that is totally new, because of a fire in 2003, no one wants to live there since they knew it was burned down but no one knows that now.
One thing about that fire that has affected all residents here? it was a misplaced candle that started the fire, yet they have since reworked all current and existing leases to ban all grills. Yes if you own a grill you have to store it 12ft from the porch, yes if you live on the second floor you have to store you grill 12ft on the ground floor and let your neighbors use it. And just recently, if you had your grill near or on your patio, they took it away from you! Yes your grill has effectively been removed by management.
Maintence is a joke, do you know what yearly pest control is? some guy coming in squirting 2 sprays by your sink and fridge. Does it help? no not when during the summer, armies of ants come through the window cracks, these are resiliant ants too, no amount of raid can deter them, you have to pay for your own pest control, unless you want them to call that guy that squirts twice on the area.
the appliances are old, you will be broke trying to keep warm, the central air is the most un efficient system ever concieved. Before i broke down and bought a 1 room heating unit, my winter electric bills were dipping close to $300. While my summer cooling bills were close to $200, it may no sound like a lot to some but here in virginia its 6-7c per kilowatt, if you live in nyc it would be close to 15c per kilowatt, in essence if you lived in nyc in this apartment you woul have to pay $700 in electic bills to keep warm. During the winter times, we limit ourselves to stay almost entirely in our bedroom w/ the heater, we move the big tv to the bedroom and eat from there, and we have zero guests over, less we play cards w/ parkas and gloves, haha.
The appliances they provide you with are old, oh one more thing about the central air, i had to have it fixed 4x since i've lived here, thats almost every 2 years it would break down, the first year we froze to death because they could not fix it properly, the next 2 years we had our own in apartment sauna in the summer. the washer drizzles out water, water jets? ha if you turned the dishwasher on w/o dishes in it, the walls would be dry, b/c it is the most underpowered appliance.
washer? the washer is the worst appliance, every time a new 2nd floor tenant moves in(i'm on the ground floor) i either tell them before time or if the ceiling starts leaking i run up and tell them, never put it on high water, it will leak. this has happened every time i must have done this 5x already.
The dry door is a joke, how flimsy is this door? i would bet your pen clip holds to your shirt w/ more tension than this dryer door. i gave up on maintence with thier half hearted attempts to keep this dry door closed and just prop the dryer so that when i close the sliding w/d doors it stays close(i've told this advice to a lot of tenants and trust me, they love this advice since maintence would do a better job giving you a roll of scotch tape)
plumping, everything leaks, how many times have they tried to tighten and re tighten the pipes? i gave up and bought those super absorbant "snake" towels that absorb gallons of water and put it under the toilet pipes, leaky sink.
i could write more about whats wrong with these dingy old apartments, but they do have a nice outside look. but trust me, paying the most expensive rent for these appliance furnished apartments is not worth your money, they even have this little area where they dump old appliances, so that they can salvage parts to sorta fix the next appliance problem that comes along, don't believe me? look around the tennis court, you'll see it, oh the
tennis court, i've had to run around once in a while to retrieve my balls, why? well obviously because the fence that has been wrecked since i moved here is never fixed, so balls roll our the 20ft gaps.
Got a problem? they won't respond, they would just rather drive around on the golf carts racing each other, does the overweight management respond to you if, your fed up calling them and actually walk over? no they'll just lay on the couch and suggesting how rude you are for interrupting thier couch ladden conversation.
The fitness center? 2 treadmills and an eliptical machine and bike that never works? with a nice view of the swimming pool.
oh the swimming pool, the one that has an overweight lifeguard? yes that may sound rude, but why would i want an overweight lifeguard in charge of young kids life? yes the pool is very shallow, but i'm pretty sure that if a danger was present the lifegaurd would waddle over around the pool and poke the poor child to safety, think i've being too judgemental? i saw this lifeguard swim/walk through one end to the other, i was almost done w/ my 3sets of 12. Oh don't get me wrong i have nothing against lifeguards working, but, one that is overweight? entrusted w/ the lives of young children and very careless adults? well this is the type of staff that is being hired. Oh but there was a fit lifeguard too, but he'd use the swimming pool as a 6hr day care for his kids, every day he worked, his kids were either in the pool, or running around the fitness center. Did it bother me personally? no, but hey he's paid to do a job, make sure lives are safe, can't really focus on that if your yelling at your own kids can you?
Again my personal review, the neighborhood is great, i give it a 5, the surroundings are great too, just that the management and staff rate a negative2, why so low? well you'd expect something to be done, if your paying the highest rent around, not expect less.