Pelham Court Apartments

If you value your time, DO NOT BOTHER scheduling a tour to see this property. The leasing office / management ghosted me TWICE for scheduled unit tours. I contacted the leasing office, which manages units for both Pelham Court and Corner Grove apartments, to schedule a tour at one of the units at Corner Grove. The leasing office had fairly restricted business hours for tours of 9am to 4:30pm, but I was able to leave work early and make the time up later. I made an appointment by phone for 4:30pm... this past Monday. I arrived a few minutes late at 4:33pm, and nobody from the leasing office was present. I waited for a full 15 minutes just to be sure I would catch an agent if they were running behind schedule.

The following morning I called the leasing office, who was apologetic and rescheduled me for a tour the following Wednesday morning (today). The agent told me she would be at the building around 8:45-8:50am, and I once again reorganized my work schedule to be there on time. Once again, when I arrived there was nobody present. I waited until 9:07am.

Missing two scheduled tours in a row is incredibly disrespectful of my time as a prospective tenant, but is also an extremely unprofessional way to run a leasing office. The very least the office could do would be to contact me by phone to inform me the agent was running late, or to apologize for missing the appointment. If the poor treatment I received is any indication of the quality of these apartments and the maintenance services offered to tenants, then I suspect I dodged a bullet. I caution anyone against considering Pelham Court or Corner Grove apartments, as customer service is clearly at the bottom of their priority list. Lee mas

Management -

Good luck ever getting ahold of them once you've started paying rent. They will disappear.
They took away the answering service and emergency maintenance line. We are now told to leave a message, emergency or not.
They started coming into the office regularly for the last few weeks after 1 year of multiple managers getting fired/quitting or having no management for weeks at a time.
At one point in time, we had no managers, and no maintenance. Nobody in the front office for... months at a time, despite almost every door being broken (can enter without key fob) and the front-paging system not allowing guests to enter.
30 minutes notice to turn water off, or 30 minutes after the fact. Two days' notice for entire building inspections only for them to never show up at the time they say and never send any clarification email until the next day. Clearly, they have no regard for tenants' time, whatsoever. Money is priority.

Increasing Costs -

Gas utilities skyrocket ~500%+ during the winter. It is calculated using RUBS which estimates your usage of gas, depending on number of tenants in your apartment and size of apartment, even though you don't control your own heating.

So, you can't "use less" because the heating isn't controlled by you. Management controls it so you pay whatever they say. You also don't get a breakdown or the original PGW bill. If you ask about this, as many have, you get "we're checking in on this" and then months of no response.

I've seen an L&I person here but I have no idea what for. Don't know what violations may or may not have happened but very strange that our building is investigated and then shortly after we get brand new "senior" managers and lots of contractors showing up all the time.

Depending on the side of the building you are on, your unit might be extremely cold, and need the heat to be on all the time with extra space heaters OR your unit heats up extremely, the temperature gets to 83 degrees so we typically will leave our two window AC units on plus leaving the windows open so it evens out around 74 degrees. Lee mas

Rushmore Management does not responsibly care for the buildings that they own, including Pelham Court. They also show total disregard for their tenants, whether it's allowing units to reach dangerous temperatures, ignoring hazardous construction and lead paint issues, or leaving broken doors and elevators unaddressed for extended periods of time.

The tenants of Pelham Court have tried expressing their concerns in a letter signed by more than half the building, only for Rushmore representatives... to laugh and file eviction suits against those standing up for themselves.

Rushmore must be accountable to their tenants, address their concerns and drop all retaliatory eviction suits. If and when they rectify their behavior and make meaningful progress on these demands, I will change my review. Lee mas

The company that owns this building does not invest in or care about proper maintenance. They do patchwork jobs that fall apart in a matter of weeks or months and they never invest in real fixes for the problems that we face as tenants. There's also a lack of concern about security in the building which is surprising considering the emails lecturing tenants about this. They don't fix the locks on the outside doors properly and low and behold people from the outside come in and wander the Halls... and steal things. They also don't properly fix the locks on our individual apartment doors when they are broken so some people only have chain locks or dead bolts. This isn't just failure to fix things it's refusal because they don't care about their tenants all they care about is the bottom line and the more maintenance they do the less profit they make. Lee mas

I have nothing positive to say about this place. Ownership cares only about bringing in new tenants and once you're in, they try to squeeze you for all the money they can while ignoring glaring issues. Even now, a letter signed by more than half the complex listing many of the building's problems problems has gone completely unaddressed by management. There are units with holes in the ceiling, inflated utility charges, lead paint, safety issues (outer doors don't lock, and people wander and... squat in the building), and most of the time no property manager present. Calling to request anything be done about this is a joke -- they'll say they're working on it or that someone is coming by and nothing will happen. A real shame that people like this exist. Lee mas