Park Bellevue

You can make it work but beware of a few things:

- You can forget about most of your deposit, regardless of the condition that you leave the apartment in. The leasing office explained that at minimum they charge over half of the "refundable" deposit and usually they try to charge more. During move-in, parts of the apartment were dirty and during move-out, the inspection person walked over the clean carpet with dirty shoes and didn't mention charges that were added later.

- If there's an… emergency outside of the leasing office hours, you are on your own. A neighbor got locked out in the night in the winter and after spending 30 min trying to reach the various emergency numbers, we were told they need to wait until the leasing office opens the next morning.

- The workmanship is shoddy at best, dangerous at worst. The giant mirror near the bathroom fell from the wall, luckily nobody was home when it happened so it didn't fall on anyone. Maintenance reattached it with flimsy plastic as a "temp" fix, which then became permanent.

- The apartments were built in 1980s and have problems. The living room heating is an old design with a loud fan motor (you can hear when the neighbors have the heating on). Plan to buy and operate your own heating equipment in the living room (bedroom is quieter). If you live on the 1st floor, you would be able to hear even light walking from the apartment above (2nd floor is quieter). If you live on the 2nd floor, fireplace use from the 1st floor will result in air pollution/smoke particles in your living room even when the damper is closed.

- The community has a spider infestation problem (some apartments are more affected than others)

- It is poorly labeled so delivery people often get confused/give up and leave packages at the wrong address.

- If you have an urgent maintenance issue, don't tell the office, but file it online instead (they tend to forget).

- The apartments are priced above market. Residents were forced to move out of non-renovated apartments into "renovated" apartments (I think it was a scheme to get around rent raising restrictions). The renovation was minimal - mostly painting over the rough 1980s cabinets and walls and replacing the fridge and stove.

- There hasn't been any major crime but some instances of theft and vandalism. A neighbor had a bike stolen, the mailboxes were vandalized and for many weeks residents had to get mail from the post office because management couldn't get them repaired. Read More