The Standard at Atlanta — Attraction in Atlanta

I lived here for two years. While this place has its perks, I wouldn't recommend choosing The Standard over the other student-living complexes near campus.

Pros The amenities are generally pretty nice. The gym has free weights, and the pool deck is a nice space when the hot tubs are actually working and it isn't trashed It's in a good location (probably explains the high rent) The furniture isn't that nice, but it gets the job done. Rooms come with TVs The staff is (generally) responsive and pleasant to work with Depending on the floor plan, common spaces in apartments are decently sized. My most recent floor plan had a large common area, but the previous one's was pretty small.

Cons Rent is very high for how small the individuals rooms are. This building was rushed in construction (and still didn't fully open on time), and you can sense that in most aspects of the building. I've had multiple cabinets break, and my balcony doors in both apartments broke. Many doors on the property are often jammed or have had broken handles at some point. I remember maintenance had to come and fix something like half of the A/C units because so many were installed improperly. There are too few maintenance workers on the property. While they are kind and down-to-earth, the lack of personnel results in most non-trivial maintenance requests taking upwards of one or two weeks to resolve. I remember my A/C unit didn't work, and it took nearly a month and 3+ maintenance work orders to get it fixed. Please hire another maintenance worker. Recycling here is terrible. In the first year after opening, there was no way to recycle anything except for cardboard. Even then, you had to take your broken down boxes all the way to the main floor and leave them outside the trash compactor. To The Standard's credit, they did add a recycling dumpster this past year, but it is around the back of the building. So, if you want to recycle, you need to lug your recyclables all the way back there. This makes it extremely inconvenient to recycle if you aren't on the first few floors. I imagine there is a lot of needless waste produced as a byproduct of the Standard's policy here. Implementing regular recycling pick ups from tenants doors would be a simple fix to this issue. There is not much study space in the building. What is there is either very uncomfortable to work at and/or hard to find. I was still finding new spaces after two years of living here. If you live above the fifth floor, you're going to be in for a bad time. There are only two elevators that service all 18 floors of the building, and they are very often backed up during class changes or on game days. Due to the excessive number of people packing into these, the elevators often broke. The pandemic has alleviated this issue, but I wouldn't judge the elevators based on these circumstances. Move out is an all-around terrible experience. Residents were told that they had to be moved out by 12:00pm on a Friday. This was horribly inconvenient given the fact that many residents were working at this time. Worse, the office closed early the day before, so residents were unable to get moving carts from the front office on that Thursday after work when many people were moving out. Furthermore, due to the asinine move-out time, elevators were packed that week, which is problematic given the ongoing pandemic. I do not remember a single time when both hot tubs on the pool deck worked. At best, one hot tub would be working, and even then it was hardly that hot. The one working tub was often a gross shade of green from all of the residents cramming into it. Before the pandemic, the pool deck was often PACKED with people, many of which were not residents. The Standard implemented an amenity band system to try and alleviate this, but it was never enforced. The gym, while generally good for lifting weights, has far too many unused ellipticals and only two bikes. Worse, the two bikes are Pelotons, meaning you need to make an account and log in every time you...

Original Review (6/29/18): My original review simply stated that they left us without housing two months before move-in. Never did I state that I lived here in my review just that they told us our rooms wouldn't be ready in time.

Updated Review (10/3/18): I wasn't going to initially post an updated review, but I saw that after several months of no response on my original review The Standard had posted a response, which you can see below (in which they violated my privacy by confirming to everyone on the internet that I live here). I had to set the record straight. Here's what happened since my previous review. After The Standard informed us that we would essentially not have a place to live two months before school started, they sent out a waitlist for available rooms that would be open on the original move-in date of August 18th, 2018. My roommates and I put our names on the list almost immediately after receiving the "construction update" email. In the weeks between being put on the waitlist and receiving a spot off of the waitlist, my roommates and I scrambled to try and find somewhere to live. This was incredibly difficult for all of us because my roommates were in California and New York respectively for the summer. It's difficult enough trying to find somewhere to live in midtown Atlanta with less than two months notice let alone having to do it from across the country. We all spent countless hours calling every apartment complex in the local vicinity trying to find a three bedroom or more floor plan, but it was to late in the game to find anything. Eventually, we were informed that we were off the waitlist and there was a unit available for us. Seems like good news, right? Not necessarily. When we signed our original lease, we had chosen a four bedroom two bath floor plan that would be $1145/month for each of us. There are only three of us, but The Standard ensured us that they would fill the fourth room. We were pretty happy with this arrangement because it was affordable and at the time seemed like a nice place to live. Now, cutback to when we got off of the waitlist. They offered us a three bedroom three bathroom floor plan for $1260/month ($1290/month for bigger bedroom). We just accepted this offer because our hands were tied. We were expected to pay the entire first month's rent despite only living their for 12 full days that month. I called to complain, but they refused to prorate it. Essentially meaning that I had to give them a free $732 for nothing. Taking this charge and dividing it by 12 adds another $60/month to rent. Then they make us pay a $60 fee through the utility provider along with another $3/month charge. Now, if you go to pay rent, don't pay by credit card because you'll be charged another $50+ fee. Oh, and guess what? If you want to pay by electronic check directly deposited to their account, you'll still pay a fee. If you do the math correctly, we're paying $1400+ at the end of the day despite the fact that there are near daily fire alarms, constant deafening construction noise throughout the day, almost none of the promised amenities being completed (no pool, no study rooms, no Starbucks), and generally only one working elevator. They've taken every opportunity to charge us for whatever they can while providing us with very little of what they promised. What we got instead was extra charges and no compensation because they know there's nothing that we can do about it. I suspect the only reason that they are replying to reviews now is that it is leasing season and they want to shed this bad reputation. Landmark has a history of pulling stunts like this on college students who can do little to stop them. Just google "Landmark Properties The Standard Lawsuit" if you're interested in more information. The audacity with which they mistreat their residences is just frankly astounding. I'm sure they spent plenty of money on lawyers to help draft up the most scammy contracts possible within the confines of the law instead of on keeping the promises...

I have been a tenant at The Standard since it opened nearly 4 years ago, and I wanted to provide a holistic review of the property and management during my time here.

When The Standard initially opened, everything that could go wrong did go wrong for about 2 years. More recently, Ownership has transitioned to an entirely new management team, and change is occurring within the property. That being said, I still believe there is a far way to go before I would recommend new tenants move in. I have stayed at The Standard during my undergrad at Georgia Tech mainly because moving is a major hassle.

This review will be split into 4 sections: Units, Management, Maintenance, and Amenities.

Units: The Standard was built as a student housing solution which inherently lends itself to high tenant turnover as roommate living situations shift and tenant graduate. As such, after 4 years of turnover many of the units feel like a quick fixer-upper apartment: slap on a fresh coat of paint, quick wipe down, ready for the next move-in. I have had the experience of living in a 4x2 and a 3x3 floorplan here. Originally I lived in the 4x2 and we were the first tenants since new construction and generally the unit itself was nice. The floorplans are smaller than the online images lead you to believe, but I didn't feel cramped. In the 3x3 floorplan I have the large bedroom for the additional monthly fee, and my goodness is it worth it! The current bedroom does not come with a closet, but they do give you a wardrobe which works fine for my needs. I moved into the 3x3 at the start of this lease term as a direct transfer from our old unit, and have been nothing but disappointed by the quality of this unit. It was clear on move in that The Standard never even cleaned the unit prior to us moving in, there are pee stains on the carpet from a previous tenants dog, and we have had a plethora of maintenance issues (which will be addressed in a later section). The reason we had to swap rooms was not necessarily by choice, but because The Standard sold our room before we re-signed for the upcoming year without contacting us first. In my opinion this is a scummy thing to do, and I wish management would have let us know they were planning on giving up our room before they actually did it. They also did not schedule move-out on the last day of the lease, which was a huge hassle as I had pre-planned travel that had to be moved to accommodate their last-minute scheduling. It is also worth noting that when you sign with The Standard they will not allow you to select a room, and even won't guarantee you are placed with your requested roommates (I have never heard of this being an issue for anyone, but they do reserve that right in the lease). About a week prior to move-in The Standard contacted me to let me know they had double-assigned our room and wanted to know if my roommates and I would be willing to split up and go with randoms: no!

Management: As I alluded to above, The Standard has recently overhauled their management team. As before, the students working in the leasing office are nice, but upper-level management is a mess and it shows throughout the property. Communication is very poor, contradictory, and rare. It feels as though they stuck 3 ex fraternity housing directors together and told them to "fill the house" for the summer, but in reality they are in control of a multi-million dollar highrise in midtown. Any time I have had to contact management with concerns it has been a wild goose chase; they rarely reply and will make promises they never follow through on. During my time at The Standard I have had 2 vespa-style scooters stolen from the parking deck, and both times management tried to shrug all responsibility and were not cooperative with the police investigation. They had security footage of my scooter being stolen but they would not release the footage to me. Numerous times I have had friends have their cars broken into in the parking garage and they have been met with similar...