Do not rent at Crown East Apartments with a pet unless you want to buy them new carpet for $1300 when you move out.
We lived there for 13 months. The carpet was in fair to bad shape when we moved in. Dave (the apartment manager) gave us a sheet of paper with 2 tiny lines (about 1.5 inches long) to document everything wrong with the apartment. I couldn't have written it all down on a full sheet of paper! But he convinced us that you don't need to write anything down unless it's a huge hole in the wall or something ridiculous like that. We did anyway. We recorded how bad the carpet was. He didn't give us a copy of that page.
We had an adult, mature female black lab that didn't pee or poop on or do anything to that carpet. We moved out 3 weeks ago and just got a bill for "pet damage" and have to replace the carpet for $1300. I called a few friends that we made that had just moved out the month before. They have also been asked to replace their carpets. One had a cat. The other a smaller dog. No messes.
I looked up Crown East doing some research. I stumbled across a picture on Craigslist that shows the units with hardwood floors now. Hmmmm, they're going to hardwood floors, but making ex-tenants buy new carpet? Dave is a liar and you need to avoid this place. In their ads they say workout room, 2 blocks from MAX, heated pool, safe area....these are all misleading! The workout room is a broken treadmill and a broken exercise bike in one of the laundry rooms. They're 2 major intersections from the MAX, it's actually 10 blocks away. The "heated pool" has a broken heating unit and is only open 2 months a year. Safe area? East 122nd? I don't think so. We saw a lot of violence in the east gateway area. The apartment has a "security guard" that passes drives through the lot twice a night for less than 1 minute each time. I called him one night when there was a gang fight in the parking lot and all they did was call the cops. I understand that, but what is the security guard for? Noise complaints?
Bottom line: AVOID AVOID AVOID!!! Unless you don't have a pet and never plan on moving out. By the way, we were seriously harassed when we told Dave that we were moving out even though our lease was up. He is crazy.
Oh yes, they also raised the rent twice in the 13 months we were there. That was probably the property managements' decision (Guardian) rather than Dave's. But still....corrupt. AND, (I keep thinking of things), you get 1 ONE 1 parking spot. Even if you rent a 3 bedroom. And there's only about 5 visitors' spots. So be prepared to park in the road even though they advertise off-street parking.
