Un/Under-addressed Tenant Concerns

This discussion is not a reflection of concierge, porter, valet, or superintendent personnel. The front-line team is professional, responsive, and doing their best to serve the building. The shortcomings below are from Dermot’s lacking management and seemingly reduced expenditure on 66 Rockwell. As a group, residents are working together to bring visibility to issues via individual communication... [more]

This discussion is not a reflection of concierge, porter, valet, or superintendent personnel. The front-line team is professional, responsive, and doing their best to serve the building. The shortcomings below are from Dermot’s lacking management and seemingly reduced expenditure on 66 Rockwell. As a group, residents are working together to bring visibility to issues via individual communication with management, group petitions, and external reviews. • Smoking: while this is a non-smoking building, both cigarettes and marijuana are smoked in the building. I don’t care if a person has either habit, but I do not want to live with it. The smell is noticeable in stairwells, hallways, and in my unit. Reports are made to management, yet repeat offenders are allowed to remain in the building for years. • Unusable laundry facilities: a typical laundry experience involves waiting for machines to open up because 1/3 – 1/2 of the washers are always broken or filthy and unusable. Formalized complaints have been made about the laundry room for nearly four years. Each time management indicates a ‘contract’ makes it hard for them to manage the room or change vendors. It’s impossible for me to believe a management company as miserly as Dermot is not renegotiating contracts every 1 – 2 years. I do believe that instead of securing a quality vendor, they chose the least expensive option regardless of impact on tenants. • Drafty windows: while my unit has not had water leaking issues with its windows (as many other units do), they are so drafty and poorly insulated the superintendent puts plastic film over them for me November – March to keep my apartment above 60 degrees. The draft, while most noticeable in the winter, is year-round and results in my A/C/heating unit running constantly to keep up with the constant flood of exterior air. And, since windows in the building do not have screens, the filth and dust that comes in irritates my allergies and leaves a black film everywhere. • Ceiling leaks: my ceiling has leaked four times in the past 4.5 years – patio flooding 30+ stories above me, a dishwasher leak in the unit above me, and general window leaks making their way to my unit. Last summer the leak was so bad I had to move out for a week so multiple areas of drywall could be cut out, repaired, and repainted. • Filthy refuse rooms: the room is often filled with trash bags. Tenants do not seem to understand the purpose of the chute. This leads to strong odors in the room and hallways because the hallway door is often propped open. Additionally, the chute door itself has been broken and open the entire time I’ve lived in the building. I believe this a fire hazard and causes additional odor issues. • Neglected routine maintenance: obvious signs include peeling trim in the stairwells, and exterior windows have not been washed in at least a year and a half. Again, this is no reflection of the maintenance staff but instead a lack of funding from Dermot to support the labor and materials needed to do anything but triage the most immediate concerns. • EOS Amenity fee: The EOS fee is ~$90 and includes a gym, a patio with grills, a game room, and a rooftop deck. Currently the amenity fee is being waived due to Covid, however as these spaces reopen, at 20% capacity, residents have been informed that the full fee will be reinstated. It is unexplainable to pay full price for 20% access. • EOS Amenity waiver: In order to use the EOS spaces, residents must sign a waiver of liability to protect Dermot. However, Dermot is unwilling to provide specific details on updates to the building air filtration or provide any concrete assurance that violators of distancing / mask guidelines will lose privileges (see comment about smokers above) • On-site management: Dermot staff swaps in / out yearly so do not expect any sort of quality interaction. Emails go unanswered for days or weeks and on-going problems must be explained time and again. [less]