Building Overview/Experience

This building isn't all bad, but it's not great either. Here are some Pros and Cons after living in a 1br/1ba: Pros: - Proximity to parks (Central and Riverside) - Proximity to subway - Some units have fire escapes - Relatively large layouts (with a lot of storage) for value; the actual layout of these units can be really nice and affordable - Basic amenities (elevator and laundry in basement)... [more]

This building isn't all bad, but it's not great either. Here are some Pros and Cons after living in a 1br/1ba: Pros: - Proximity to parks (Central and Riverside) - Proximity to subway - Some units have fire escapes - Relatively large layouts (with a lot of storage) for value; the actual layout of these units can be really nice and affordable - Basic amenities (elevator and laundry in basement) work well enough Cons - Management can be difficult and hard to get a hold of. They don't advertise or use any email or web service; the only way to contact them (and pretty much the only way they contact you) is by phone or snail mail. - Super is minimally useful and even harder to get a hold of. While he's been a fairly nice older gentleman in my experience, it seems he only uses a landline phone for all communications. That means that he pretty much never answers when you call him, and after you leave a message, he doesn't call back; he just shows up randomly at your door. When I've had to have repairs done, results have been 50/50; either they've been resolved well enough, or he just put some kind of shoddy/temporary fix. - Building/unit feels like it hasn't been renovated in decades... at least. You can tell the policy in a lot of these units is to just paint over problems (heads up: this includes water damage). Right after moving in, I had parts of sinks fall/break off, realized that kitchen drawers would barely open/close, and chunks of wall/paint easily coming off. - Consistent building/maintenance issues. Within weeks after moving, the boiler broke and we practically had little to no hot water for weeks. The roof leaked multiple times, even causes water damage to non-top-level floors. The building is old, which means thin walls, and practically no noise-insulation from the outside (all on a block with a bus stop, problematic/grid locking parking deck, and where ambulances and such consistently cut through). - Security issues. Also not long after moving in, there were multiple reports of break-ins. While the building insisted that we need to be careful about buzzing people in and having our doors locked (both of which are true), other causes could be the fact that the two doors into the building often have glitchy locks and that the ancient intercom system makes it difficult to make out any sort of speech coming through. [less]