Bower Westside — Attraction in Atlanta

Sorry for the formatting, but Google won't let you insert newlines. I'll try and give any prospective resident a look into my experience over the past two years of calling Tenside my home. First, the good: The location is fantastic, with most Georgia Tech classes a quick 20 minute walk away, and a ton of great places to eat and shop nearby. A shady Kroger and a decent Walmart are an easy 10 minute drive from Tenside. The apartments are very modern-looking and the appliances worked well. Maintenance was very responsive to all of our requests, often completing the required work within 24 hours. The online resident portal is great, as you can split monthly rent between roommates and create service requests all from the comfort of your apartment. The events that Tenside hosts for its residents are also pretty fantastic, and from what I've seen there have been a lot of people that turn up who you can meet and get to know better. Now, the bad: While the location in proximity to other places of interest is great, you are right in the heart of Atlanta. There was hardly a night when I was walking along Northside Drive with my dog that I wasn't asked for money or yelled at. The same people are sometimes also within the vicinity of the parking deck, which can get a bit uncomfortable. Almost every courtesy officer that Tenside has hired is on their phone when they are "on duty". Their presence never made me feel particularly safe, and I don't think that in the entire time I lived at Tenside I saw a particular security guard walking without his earbuds in his ear. The communication with the leasing office is absolutely terrible. On multiple occasions I had sent emails to 2 or more members of the staff, and almost always got responses back 2 or 3 days later that took maybe 20 seconds to process and generate a response for. The other times, I usually did not receive a response until I went to the leasing office in person or sent follow up emails requesting a response. They also are not consistent with announcements at all. Sometimes, leasing office announcements are posted around the building on paper. Sometimes, they're sent out to residents through email. Sometimes, neither one gets done and residents are left in the dark. This is the case with the parking policy that the two previous reviewers commented on, which changed numerous times and was never communicated to the residents. The attitude of the leasing office is very much not what I am looking for in resident services. When confronted with issues and how long it has taken to address them, they often point fingers at residents saying that they "have only known about them since you told me". I think that rather than waiting for residents to report things like laundry facility machines being broken for a month, it would not be unreasonable for them to take some time to survey their own apartment complex and make sure everything is working correctly. I'm all for helping to note things that need to be fixed, but being constantly inconvenienced by broken things that they didn't catch before they affected me is not as okay as they seem to think it is. It's the same way for broken security gates which could easily be tested by courtesy officers every shift. Instead, I had to communicate that my hall's gate had been broken for several days. Finally, Tenside is far from pet friendly. The $500 pet fee and $15 pet rent (as of June, 2015) don't seem to do anything for the pets, as all they have on the property are a couple of patches of mulch and poop bag stations that were empty 25% of the time (another issue that took far too long for the leasing office to remedy, and which they should be more proactive about). I would only recommend that you take your dog there if you don't mind driving to Piedmont Park a lot. TL;DR: Overall, I disliked Tenside, and I'd have trouble recommending it to anyone who is not attending Georgia Tech, doesn't care about experiencing life in Midtown, or who has...

Now that I have officially moved out of this hellscape, I can finally write a review of my horrible experience with this complex. Since I know this isnt all bad and I am just one person I want to talk about the positives first. POSITIVES: This apartment complex is honestly in the best location for someone who drives around the city, being 10-20 minutes from everything you could possibly want to do is perfect especially for a college student like myself. Another positive is that out of the 13 months of my lease I did see the complex attempt to make improvements which were greatly appreciated. Lastly, I know prices have increased but I paid around $1400 every month with conservice and not typically spending more than $1500 AND a huge apartment which it is hard to find an apartment in metro atl even in this neighborhood for that little, now prices have gone up but i do want to mention that in my experience. NEGATIVES: So idk what i hated most about this building, the 40+ little roommates I had, having rats the size of a chihuahua crawl on my feet when I walk my dog, or honestly just the management. To start off, yes my apartment was infested with mice, it got to a point where I stopped calling the pest control and just bought my own traps. before yall say that I am dirty, they specifically were in my pantry though I would see them run around my apartment at least twice a day. Furthermore, when I moved in my literal 3rd day in the building they booted and towed my car with no warning because I wasn't on the resident email list yet and had to pay $150 just to be able to drive my vehicle when mind you I had just dropped thousands of dollars on my cross state move as well as furniture. Then there was the issue with my oven. When I moved in my oven did not work. I had to put in 4 different work requests and after 4 freaking months I got my oven replaced. But since we are talking about maintenance let's chat about it! I will say every person I met was so sweet but, when I moved in I was promised to have the new door lock that every single unit in my building has but me. After numerous calls, emails, and maintenance requests I was informed i was "on a list" and that i would be getting it installed "soon" this never happened. You may be wondering why i just brought that up but essentially because I was the only person in the building with a physical key, maintenance could only fulfill work orders when I was home and I worked 40-60 hours a week so I was never home when they were doing their rounds. You may be asking "why wouldn't they have a master key" well news flash they don't! so if i for some reason I lost the key to my unit i would be SOL 😃. Due to this 90% of my maintenance requests were just deleted and never got resolved. Lastly, the elevators are down at least twice a week and another stupid nitpicky thing is that if you live on a top floor like I did, it takes about 5 minutes to go all the way down the parking garage so plan accordingly because you will be late to stuff lmao. All in all, i'm not saying don't move in, im sure with the new property management team they will do great but as of for me, this never felt like home, i would always be scared I would have a bunch of mice waiting at my front door when I came home. My dog would go on a frenzy chasing rats and mice and I was just exhausted of not being able to keep things like ramen in my pantry or the mice would eat it. I would get woken up out of my sleep to the screams of random drunk people (which is lowkey expected since its near georgia tech). I would recommend getting rodent repellent or get like a cat and also understanding that west midtown is still the city so there will be downtown like...

Mismanaged. The corporate office (Waterton Residential) being in Chicago says a lot about their priorities, doesn't it? I've lived at Tenside for 3 years, so I've seen it change a lot for the worse.

Resident feedback is not taken into account whatsoever (except if you rate lowly here apparently). Thinking residents have ANY real influence at this apartment complex is a complete farce.

The staff are always happy to listen to your concerns, but it's total lip service.

As nice as the local employees are, they seem to have no control over management policies which are simply handed down from on high. If you lived here for a few years, wouldn't you expect your opinion as a resident to matter? What if you were a staff member?

High staff and resident turnover rates. Keep looking y'all.

Positive things I can say: -Close to campus -Maintenance has always been very fast and professional thankfully

Specific issues for anyone who read this far: -Package delivery/notification system - poorly implemented -Communication - regular problems when communicating via email or sending unwelcome spam to residents -Parking deck procedures are a nightmare for everyone (they're making an extra buck by contracting with a shady Atlanta booting company) - the rules are notoriously unclear, and residents are the ones footing the bill. These "guidelines" have been changed several times.

Please note that the parking issues do not apply to you if you work in the leasing office - only to everyone else, including visitors of Five Guys or other nearby restaurants. The worst part of these procedures is management pretends this booting policy is about "security." It's an illusion. Existing security personnel as well as Georgia Tech and Atlanta police officers already did a fine job before.

NOTE: I've voiced each of these individual concerns to staff at Tenside as well as the Waterton Residential regional manager, as well as many of my neighbors many months ago. I'm just now adding this review since if you just come in for a tour, you're going to have a VERY different perspective.

I stake my reputation on my word about the quality of service Tenside Apartments provides. Feel free to contact me any time if you're a potential resident and you want a truly honest perspective on what it is like to live here.

Here's what the nameless owner said to another reviewer who also complained about the atrocious parking situation a year back:

"We hope that since your writing, you are able to agree that the parking situation has improved. If not, we welcome your visit to our office to discuss your concerns."

Uh yeah, this is what I meant by lip service. I have, along with many of my neighbors, made it clear how horrible the parking policy is since its inception. That response was posted a year ago, but here we are - literally nothing has changed. It isn't so much an invitation for discussion about the parking procedures because a discussion requires dialogue.

If I just wanted to complain, I wouldn't be talking to the staff about this. It's the clever illusion of feedback. Yeah, I'm sure some team in Chicago somewhere will eventually be forced into reading these reviews, but it will lead to no tangible changes. If Tenside or Waterton Residential really cared about the residents at all, community members would be invited to be a part of the decision making process. It's just a black box right now where the bottom line is the only real concern that...