Review History for anonymous

Not Worth the High Rent Price!

My girlfriend and I moved into a 1-br. apartment on the second floor of Mill City District Apartments towards the beginning of summer. She convinced me to sign a lease here with here because she liked the style of the apartment, the trendy/hip building, and the downtown location. The common areas, work-out room, outdoor facilities, pool, and hot tub are very nice, leading to an instant attraction to the atmosphere. I thought it was nice and liked the same features, but too expensive. Nevertheless, we moved in... and it was a huge mistake. Here's why, in no particular order: (1) The floors in our apartment are light-colored, fake wood, and if you get water on them and don't clean it up within 10-min., the floors will bubble up. Likewise, the floor has bubbled up near the refrigerator door, and I hear this is happening in a lot of the apartments in the building (according to the maintenance staff, due to the building "shifting"?). (2) The paint job that the custodian did was absolutely horrendous. You are allowed to have an accent wall painted for free and he literally did such a bad job that he got paint on the OUTSIDE of our door. How the heck did that happen?! (3) Nothing in terms of fixtures and appliances in the apartment justifies the high rent price. The refrigerator is the sort of quality you'd put in your garage. The cabinets are no better than IKEA. The counter top isn't any sort of stone and there is barely any counter space. The stove is electric, not gas, so it never comes clean after the first use. The bathroom counter is white and seems to absorb the color of make-up permanently. The bathroom toilet is one of those cheap low-flow versions and always gets clogged. The bathroom shower is that fake plastic liner instead of real tile. The light gray bathroom floor is the sort of floor you'd use in your spare room or den; the sort of floor you saw in your elementary school. (4) There is a good amount of closet space, but the ones that are finished have those cheap wire set-ups. One closet was literally just empty space, no shelves. In the bathroom, the linen closet doesn't have a door. Either does the area where the washer/dryer rest. (5) Parking is market-priced based upon how close you are to the elevator. So parking can be from $85 to $135. Of course there are no $85 spots left (apparently, even though the garage isn't full at night). We chose not to give them any more of our money for parking and parked at a garage one-block away for $80/mo. Not to mention, I doubt the garage is ventilated because it gets to be 90 degrees down there and stinks like exhaust and garbage sometimes. (6) The common areas are not air conditioned, so when you walk into the building, it's uncomfortably muggy and hot in the summer. They are heated in winter, but once at night I was in the "party room" watching TV and it was literally 85* in there during a rain storm and water was leaking from the ceiling. (7) Sometimes, people are in the pool our outside in the common area until 1AM on weekdays, creating a ton of noise. Neighbors have complained and, as a response, one of the VP's of the company that owns the building had a letter put on everyone's door stating they will no long tolerate loud noise. Yet it still happens and this letter did not indicate what noise was being bothersome, so it was just as immature as the people violating the noise curfew. (8) The doors to the apartments must have ZERO sound deadening because I can hear the conversations people have in their apartment across the hall and certainly can hear what folks say as they stomp down the hallway. (9) The building feels like the dorms did in college. The average age of the folks that live hear are between 25-35, I'd say. I'm 27, but past living in a party zone. (10) The wall paint must be cheap or something because if you try to clean the walls, sometimes the paint will chip off. Odd. (11) I waited over a month to have some floor molding fixed. Nearly two months! (12) The closets (that have doors) have those outdated, cheap folding doors that eventually don't close straight and look like crap, in my opinion. We did like the sliding doors the grant access to the closet from the hallway and from the living room to the bedroom, though. But the ladder door gets in the way of where you would put a TV and you have to either place your TV in an odd place or pull it out from the wall. That was kind of annoying but not a huge deal. (13) Instead of a proper island, you are given an IKEA-style kitchen island cart on wheels with either a real or fake gray granite top and gray metal structure. Since there is next to zero drawer space in the kitchen, we had to use the cart's metal-mesh drawers to house things like silverware, etc. It feels cheap. (14) The carpet in the bedroom is rock hard, as if it doesn't have much padding underneath it. Nothing really to worry about because you probably won't find better in an apartment, but still for the price I expected something more luxurious. (15) Cheap medicine cabinet in the bathroom. Like Home Depot clearance sale cheap. (16) Not enough ceiling lighting and for claiming to be a "green building" there are no ceiling fans in the apartments, at least not the ones that I've been in. (17) Unless you remove these black plastic blockers, you are not able to open the windows more than 5-inches. I'm sorry, but it's my apartment and I'll open the windows as high as they can go if I want to and the landlord shouldn't be blocking them, whether it be for the sake of security or any other risk. (18) Since everything... EVERYTHING is white, everything gets dirty in 5-min. flat. (19) The building charges even more if you want a storage unit. Common! (20) Motorcycle parking, for a tiny little spot, is $50/mo. You are not allowed to park a motorcycle in the same spot as your car (even though people do so with scooters; what's the difference?). I was happy that nobody parks in the spot section I do, otherwise I'd be pissed because there are two cars that would make it impossible for me to get my large motorcycle out if it was surrounded by other motorcycles. (21) The air conditioning system vents are only on one side of the apartment. Now this wasn't a problem in terms of cooling (or heating) the place, but when you are sleeping, the air just rushes into the bedroom making it cold for a bit while the air is flowing. Turning down the air made it too hot sometimes, but still the thing would come on. And when it does come on, it's loud. Not very loud, but loud. (22) While this isn't the fault of the building, parking around the building is not free on the weekends like it should be. There used to be free spots in front of the building, but it's as if MCDA called the city to have meters put there so people would have to buy their parking spots. Just one day, meters... no reason. (23) The bedroom is just a little bit too small. Normal for an apartment, sure, but given how much space the living room has proportionately in terms of width, an extra foot of bedroom space would have been nice. Not really a complaint, just an observation there. (24) For the price of the unit, I would have expected SOME utilities to be paid for. Not one single utility is paid for. Not one. Unbelievable. You can get a mortgage for the price of this apartment and no utilities are paid, at all? Wow. (25) If you are unlucky enough to be on the far side of the building from the garbage chute, you have to walk what feels like a quarter of a mile to get to it. And literally every single time I went to drop garbage off in it, it was clogged. You also are not allowed to drop off paper/cardboard in the garbage room, you have to carry that to the loading dock. If this was a "green building", they'd ensure ease of recycling across the board. Nobody recycles cardboard/paper here and you can tell, because nobody follows the no paper rule. In the while, why my girlfriend liked this place more than I did when we signed up, we both ended up hating living here and after 4 or so months decided to sublease. Luckily the management found a sublease tenant for us and we were on our way. Sure, this place is a trendy hot spot for young professionals and rich kids, but it's a horrible value. Not to mention the creepy old lady who is always in the common areas screaming at me about how good looking I or a friend of mine is and swearing her lungs off in front of my girlfriend's fairly conservative family. It seems like a good portion of folks who live here are getting it paid for by their parents, or they have a lot of money and don't care. The upstairs penthouse apartments are apparently much nicer than the first two levels, but still having to walk through the lobby every day listening to Lady Gaga on the ceiling speakers sucks. Sometimes you want to come home to a place to live, not a rave party. All that said, the outside of the building is nice, the common areas are nice, the management is nice, and the location is pretty good, especially if you are a Vikings fan. I would never live here again, nor would I recommend living here. We tired of it very quickly, but others I've spoken to love it here, so we may not be the right personality for this building. We didn't find it a good value (at all).