Midtown 360 — Attraction in Orem

I wrote the review below a year ago at three stars. I need to revise based on our current experience.

Our heat stopped working yesterday afternoon, and not for the first time this season. We called to have it fixed again, and were told that it was a massive problem affecting multiple residents. The heat would be fixed in 2 weeks at the earliest, and possibly not until the end of winter.

Our options? End our lease immediately and leave; take a $300 concession and move into an apartment in another building on a month-to-month basis; or take a $750 concession and move into another apartment continuing our current lease.

We are taking the second option because we do not want to be homeless, but Midtown 360 has made this situation more stressful and more difficult than necessary. I am almost 9 months pregnant and they are offering us only $300 for the cost of moving all of our things to another building. They gave us no immediate options, such as a hotel, to keep us safe from the cold, so we are forced to stay with friends until we can have our furniture moved at our own expense, essentially.

There is no worse feeling than not having a safe place to bring your baby home if it happens to arrive a little early. Do not rent from these people. They are unwilling to make their customers the least bit happy or to help in any way when THEY make a mistake. Totally unacceptable and frankly unbelievable behavior from the management.

Like many other residents, we have had a mixed experience at Midtown 360. We love our apartment itself, which is spacious, well-designed, and has a great view, but the conditions of the building and the property all need to be improved.

We were promised a specific apartment and a specific move-in date, and both were changed, so that we ended up in a hotel for one night and moving into a different apartment the next day. The management seemed keen to make things right, giving us lower rent and hiring movers to help us. Although the new apartment has different finishes, it is very similar to the original and we like it. However, when we moved in the apartment still wasn't actually ready. There were no mirrors, no blinds, and barely any water pressure, an issue that took months to resolve. Luckily once an issue makes it to the maintenance employees here, it tends to get resolved quickly and in a friendly manner; we've had no issues with the maintenance employees, who seem to do their level best in the face of construction problems and ill-prepared apartments.

Unfortunately, general management here leaves a lot to be desired. I have worked in customer service and I know that it's difficult, but rent here is high enough that we expect good service. My biggest concern is cleanliness at this property. The elevators, trash chute rooms, and surrounding grounds are consistently covered in trash, pungently smelly, and visibly dirty, and management seems not to notice nor care. According to our lease, it is the management's responsibility to maintain common areas, and this definitely isn't happening. We hope that this will improve once construction ceases, but I have doubts. We have also had issues with our mail, billing, and parking, which still hasn't been assigned.

Finally, this building still does not participate in recycling, which is unconscionable. Residents are forced to throw away all recyclables. When we moved in, we were told that recycling would be established within weeks, and this never happened.

Employees are accommodating and kind, but there are clearly issues farther up the food chain that cause problems for residents...

I’ve read through all these reviews and can say that all the comments listed are accurate – good and bad. We’ve lived here for 7 months. Here’s my two cents…

Pros: Apartment is brand new – Yes, it’s beautiful. Smart tech – Nice, but I haven’t used it. Very nice clubhouse and exercise area. Walls are thick – Don’t (usually) hear noise from neighbors unless they’ve got some heavy bass going…does happen but not often enough to be bothersome. Sure, the staff is nice. Most people are when they are at their jobs. Convenient location – close to I-15 and major supermarkets/shopping.

Cons: No recycling – Not a huge deal but if we have smart tech apartments, why not this? Dog poop – Yes, it’s everywhere: inside, outside, parking garages, elevators. People just don’t pick up after their pets. I’ve asked how often someone comes to clean it up and they said daily… it must accumulate pretty quickly then. If you have children, beware: most people let their pets run off leash in the central circle for exercise. The new management isn’t allowing pets but the ones already here have been grandfathered in. Heating – This is the bane of my existence. Luckily we’re not in the group of people that were without central air. However, we’ve had someone from the complex come multiple times to look at our system. The best way to describe it is that it just randomly stops working. We’ll have it set to 75 (we have two babies) and will wake up freezing cold…with it reading in the 60’s. There’s been no explanation so we just have to reset it. Elevators – I’ve never been stuck in one like other people have written. However, when they are down they are down for days. Once I walked up six flights of stairs while 9 months pregnant. No joke. And I didn’t deliver in the stairway (thank goodness). Fire alarms – The trash chutes get clogged because people put large boxes in them. Then the fire alarms go off. Not sure how the two are connected but this is what the complex told us. In December we were outside in the middle of the night twice due to this…with a one year old and my pregnant self. Trash rooms – These can get pretty gross. Again, with the boxes. They’re supposed to be walked down to the first floor but who has time for that? They accumulate in the trash rooms. Then people must think the chutes are clogged so they just start leaving their nasty garbage in the rooms too. Our floor is missing a handle on the chute so it’s just always open with sharp metal. My husband cut his finger on it and needed stitches. I left a voicemail for the front office about it a couple weeks ago and guess what? That’s right, it’s still missing a handle. Packages – The complex doesn’t want to deal with distributing packages (which I understand). However, most of the delivery companies don’t bother trying to bring packages to the door. They are supposed to leave a ticket on the door saying they attempted to deliver it but they don’t. So it ends up at the front office. If you weren’t expecting something you’d never know it was there. We just tell our family to let us know if they’re sending us something so we can keep an eye out. Hot water – This was the icing on the cake today that prompted me to write this review. We are without hot water. It is 10 a.m. on a Sunday. The office is closed. When you hit “1” to be connected with after hours maintenance it says “this number is not accepting calls at this time”. I guess we’ll be boiling hot water tonight to give our children...

UPDATE* The above review posted by me was a description of my experience with the FORMER management group at Midtown360 (ALLIANCE). Approximately 6 months ago a new management group (Deanza) was put in place here and I have recently learned that Deanza also owns the Midtown360 property. Since this change, things here , billing and living conditions have declined drastically, and now my honest review and advice to home seekers in this area is to stay as far away from Midtown360 as you possibly can. The management, (if you care to call it that) is horrible because they pay no attention to the concerns voiced by the residents. It seems their only concern is to rent out the apartments to whoever as fast as they can to keep the money coming in. Now we have buffoons running up and down the hallways yelling and screaming at 2am waking everyone up. Deanza doesn't care as long as the rent gets paid But if you enjoy this sort of antics, and don't mind being over-billed for utilities every month, (whether you even used the utility in question that month or not) and if you don't mind paying for "common area utilities and HVAC in areas where lights and televisions are left on all day long in an empty clubhouse, or where lobby doors are propped open all day long in the summer with the HVAC struggling to try to cool the area.... If this sounds like things you'd like to be billed for, then this is the place for you. Gone are the nice management people I spoke of earlier. Now you'll be lucky if you can even find the Manager in her office (since she is rarely there at all). If this sort of billing sounds bad to you then you'll be horrified to learn that you will be charged for the use of the actual billing service itself! So, you will be paying for the billing service that over-bills you. It's in the lease that you will sign that you will pay for the billing service! It's just another way that the Deanza ownership here believes it is the responsibility of the residents to pay for all the operating expenses here....just like the fact that they have supplied an internet connection to the laundry room of your unit, but that you must supply your own Ethernet router, (or hub) to send the internet to the different rooms of your unit! (Unless you want to sit in the laundry room to use the internet). Could the owners have supplied each unit with a router to make the internet usable in each room? Yes, they could, and should have! But this is a perfect example of the ownership mentality.... Why purchase routers for 550 units when we can make the residents supply their own? Just another way for them to be cheap and save their own money at the resident's expense. So, to maybe explain this better... Is their an Ethernet outlet in the living room and bedroom? Yes, but it doesn't work until a new resident goes to the store to purchase a router/hub to plug all the Ethernet cables in the laundry room into. So, I am out of here I'm leaving and NOT renewing my lease. I refuse to line the pockets of these crooked owners any longer.Plus they charge way too much per sq ft These owners are charging $1.54 per sq ft for the privilege of living here without a pool or hot tub, and to listen to idiots howl in the hallways at 4am. Anywhere else in Utah county the going rate is between $1- $1.25 per square ft, (with most being only $1).Check if you don't believe me. IN SUMMARY: STAY AWAY FROM...