Chronicle Mill — Attraction in Belmont

In my opinion, you are making a mistake if you move here. I have never felt the need to leave a review of anywhere before, especially not a negative one, but I want to warn others. Also, I have spoken with many residents and if they haven't already moved out, they are planning to when their lease is up.

Rent is outrageous. This is the smallest apartment I have ever lived in, but the most I have paid. Not worth it at all. Rental increase is even more outrageous. I had a 6 month lease, and when it came to resigning a new 6 month lease, the rent went up $500 per month; however, it was cheaper to sign an 18 month lease, but no one wants to do that who already knows what it's like living here. There is a no-exception $95 cleaning fee at move out. The cleaning fee doesn't require the tenant to have everything spotless when they move out, or so it says. My family and I cleaned my apartment nicely, but didn't get it sparkling because we understood I was paying for people to come in and clean. In addition to the $95 cleaning fee, I was charged and extra $100 for them to hit the self clean button on my oven and wipe out my fridge. This is another unfair way for them to make money off of you. From the 1st day I moved in, my power continuously shut off. This was an issue with the apartment complex wiring. For 4 days, the maintenance guy, would drive from his house to switch a breaker to give me 5 minutes of power until it shut off again. After a few days of this, the manager let me stay in the model home. There was no rush getting this fixed. There has also been a huge wet spot on my floor, making my floor squishy and it caves in when walked on. I immediately told management, who then said it wasn't water damage and wasn’t too concerning. It is obviously water damage, coming from family members who work in construction and from having common sense. I've lived here for over a year and it hasn't been fixed yet. I won't be surprised if this doesn't get fixed for the next person. My air filter was changed 1 time during my year and a half living here. This is supposed to be routine maintenance. My fire alarm was dying just weeks after moving in and I was told by the front desk to let emergency maintenance know. The maintenance guy then proceeded to say it was my fault I didn't call sooner (I work 8-5, and wasn't home when it started), because he was already home and didn't want to drive back to fix it. I have a dog and the loud beeping scared her to death. After about 30 minutes of trying to convince him to come fix it, he agreed and came hours later. Once he arrived, he couldn't find a ladder because of poor training, and once he found the ladder he was too scared to get on it and change it. I told him I would climb up myself and do it, because my dog was scared and shaking at this point. Parking deck is not connected to any building and makes no sense. We were promised there would be a restaurant, coffee shop, and retail stores when we moved in. There is none. The paint on the walls is so cheap. It scratches and comes off if you look at it the wrong way. The sink and shower finishes turn brass due to them being so cheap. This being a "luxury" apartment and paying as much as we do to live here, this should be better. The pool is disgusting and rarely cleaned. I got in one time and hairs and dirt and band-aids were floating around everywhere. Getting packages has always been a huge issue. The "smart system" is not smart. For the first part of my lease, the package door was locked and management had to let you in. If you work 9-6, you’re out of luck. -I personally do not like the fobs. If you forget your fob when you go outside, you’re screwed. This has happened to me many times in the middle of the night walking my dog, and I just have to wait for someone to come in or out to let me in. It’s very unsafe. And you can’t enter downstairs because then you have to have a fob to get up the elevator. There needs to be a security guard or a better system.

There are better options in...

We were the first residents to move into Chronicle Mill in October 2022. While we had really wanted to love it, our experience hasn’t been as ideal as we had hoped.

Starting with the positives, the apartment itself is fine; we like the layout, size, and finishes. Additionally, the maintenance staff are top-notch and super responsive to our issues, as are the office staff, and the other residents are kind and quality people.

Unfortunately, though, the soundproofing between apartments is terrible. Unless you live on the top floor, you can hear EVERYTHING happening in the apartment above you (and outside). Regarding our upstairs neighbors, we deal daily with hours of loud stomping (adults), running (kids), and thunder-like bangs, and this noise continues even after the Mill’s quiet hours have started for the evening (Sunday-Thursday 9 PM-8 AM and Friday-Saturday 11 PM-8 AM). After speaking with other residents, we’ve found that we aren’t the only ones with this issue, so we know there is poor soundproofing throughout the entire apartment building and it makes living here very stressful as we never get a break from the anxiety-inducing noise, unless our upstairs neighbors are away.

Also, although the building was not ready to open on move-in day, they (the decision-makers for the Mill) went ahead with it. Because of that, we have unpainted molding in the bathroom, trim popping off under the kitchen cabinets, and lots of construction stains on the floor (caulking, damage, etc.). There was also no pest control done prior to opening and, as we were moving in, we noticed that we had ants all throughout the apartment, as well as hundreds of gnats in between the windows and the screens. Additionally, our A/C has gone out a couple times, we consistently lose our internet service, the elevator is constantly having issues, the entry doors are often getting jammed, and cell service is spotty. Also, apparently, our unit is supposed to have shower doors for the master bathroom shower, but they have yet to be installed.**

**Thankfully, the issue of the ants and gnats has been resolved thanks to the pest control service contracted by the Mill, as has our A/C thanks to maintenance. Our shower doors were also installed, just a little over two months after we moved in.

Additionally, because work is still being done on the building, the fire alarm has falsely gone off multiple times (caused by workers). The issue with this is that we have a toddler and a dog and when the most recent false alarm happened at 10 PM, it completely terrified our sleeping child and dog.**

**The office staff sent an apology email for the nighttime false alarm.

Finally, a month after moving in, we received an email from the apartment manager asking us to comply with something not found in the signed lease agreement. The email was community-wide stating that all dog owners needed to submit DNA tests for their dogs so the apartment complex can fine owners who don’t pick up their dogs’ poop. Fair enough, because we always clean up after our dog, except that we never signed anything regarding this requirement. After receiving the email, we went to the office and asked for a copy of the lease where it states the requirement, but we were never followed up with.**

**After submitting this review, the apartment manager followed up with us regarding the dog DNA requirement. We do not have to comply, and we have not received any additional community-wide enforcement emails.

While the apartments are beautiful on the outside, it is important to be aware of the issues, as we know that several other neighbors have had similar experiences and we want to provide an honest review.**

**Interestingly, after we initially submitted this 2-star review, more reviews were submitted giving Chronicle Mill 5 stars. However, all of the reviewers also reviewed another RKW Residential apartment complex, 511 Queens, on the exact same day. Just something to think...

LOCATION NOT WORTH IT!! Worst ever possible place to live! I wish I could give 0 stars, you are literally paying for overpriced cheaply made trash. I was one of the first residents to move in when they first opened and I lived there for 2 years, in those 2 years I had more issues than you could imagine! The first day I moved in the shower floor cracked and busted and I wasn’t able to use my shower for a week, had to use another units shower. When they finally fixed the shower I then had no hot water so still couldn’t shower in MY apartment! It progressively got worse after that maintenance was in my apartment almost every week, the office doesn’t care about anything going on in the apartments they just care about the money, it took an arm and a leg just to get ahold of someone with issues because they don’t have an actual office phone it just goes to an automated recording, the only way to get ahold of them is to go up to the office and half of the time they aren’t even in there. Before I moved out I noticed that my bed frame had fell through the floor and made a bunch of holes because of how cheap the flooring they used was.(Apparently you can’t have a metal bed frame without it going through the floor) I put in a work order and when the maintenance man came in to take a look he was so rude and made me so uncomfortable I had to ask him to leave. When I told Angie the apartment manager she said they would fix it when I moved out at no charge so I didn’t have to deal with him again. When I got my final account summary they charged me $250 for the floor so I went up there because they wouldn’t answer the phone and Angie acted like she didn’t know what I was talking about and like we hadn’t had 10 conversations before hand about it. I then asked her for her managers number because she was being no help and being very rude she then proceeded to take her glasses off with her elbows on her desk ROLLED HER EYES AT ME put her glasses back on and told me she couldn’t give me her number. I have never been that disrespected in my life. After a long argument that could’ve been avoided I finally got the phone number. Come to find out they sent a complete different invoice then they sent to the company that owns chronicle mill. The invoice they sent me had an extra $80 in charges they couldn’t explain why were added, this probably explains why she was so hesitant on giving me the phone number. They ended up redoing it and not charging for anything and actually ended up owing me money, but it took a month of calling EVERYDAY to figure it out. Not to mention there is paper thin walls, power outages all of the time, fire alarms at all times anywhere from 8a.m - 1 a.m doesn’t matter you still have to go outside and wait for the fire department to turn it off, and constant construction half the time you can’t use the amenities provided or even the parking lot right by the building because that’s where they put the porta potties, also there is dog poop all over the place you can’t go outside without stepping in it. Over all very shady place run very poorly and had so many issues with the apartment manager ANGIE she should not be working here. Save yourself the time from even trying with this place. Btw they use company apartment complexes to write fake good reviews to outweigh...