One On Centre — Attraction in Pittsburgh

If you are reading this, be ready for a long but honest review.

First, I would like to say that One on Centre does a great job of publicizing the fact that they have "world-class amenities" while none of the neighboring buildings offer anything to their residents. While it is true that One on Centre offers all of these amenities, I would like to show you why not one amenity offered lives up to its expectations.

Let's start with the most important: Safety. If you have ever stepped foot inside this building, the first thing you will notice is that there are key detectors all over the place that require you to use a key fob to enter. Now, at face value that may seem like this building is impenetrable to non-residents. HOWEVER, it very clearly is not. There is an entrance (I will not name the entrance to save the very little safety the residents have left) that is almost always open. On top of that, once you are in you pretty much have access to everything, because elevators are always running and easy to get on, and the amenity floors always have people coming in and out so you can use all the amenities. On top of the insecurity, why are we paying so much for amenities that anyone in the vicinity can easily access?

Next are the specific items "provided" to residents. The most used ones are the gym, study rooms, computer lab, starbucks coffee machine, pool and hot tub, ping pong table, and billiards table. Here is why not one of these is a good amenity.

Gym: The gym has high-tech equipment, don't get me wrong. However, for the elliptical and the bicycle machines that are high-tech, you cannot use the tech part because it requires an account with the company that made the machine and it has to be connected to the wifi which they are not. Furthermore, there is only one free barbell bench, and only two benches for free weights.

Study rooms: Don't even bother trying to find study rooms. The sheer number of students in the building and the extreme lack of rooms is one issue, but the bigger issue is that there are so many residents that will put their stuff in the rooms early morning and leave it there, even when they are not using the room (which is most of the time), and there are no penalties for hogging rooms.

The computer lab: Isn't it annoying when you actually have to print something urgent and you know your building offers free printing, and there is no paper? You will see that negligence of the amenities is a common occurrence in the other sections.

The infamous Starbucks machine: As a building that is mostly filled with college students, the fact that coffee is free for residents is a huge bonus. They even go further to say that they offer hot chocolate and teas. BUT OF COURSE, the machine is almost never filled with hot chocolate, the tea bags are almost never there, and the machine breaks down every now and then. You will quickly realize that the amenities play tricks on you; they work when you don't need them and they almost never work when you do need them.

Funny side note: The different parts of the building management aren't even on the same page sometimes. They once fixed the machine and changed the amount of volume provided from 8 oz. to 12 oz. Of course, there was an issue. The cups that were being restocked were still 8 oz. cups, and the liquids would tend to spill over because they were dispensing more than the cup could hold.

Pool and Hot tub: This is pretty easy. They say they offer it, and then they keep it open for about 1 month per semester. Isn't that lovely?!

Ping Pong and Billiards Table: Similar to the study rooms issue, there are students that will hog these all day; when they are not filling study rooms with their stuff so no one else can use them, they are using these tables so no one else can use them.

It may sound like I am just complaining, but just ask a resident and most times than not you will get a similar response.

NOTE: Pray that you get an apartment on the lower levels, because the elevators break about once a month (they also...

I spent an hour of my time to write this very honest review so that other students would not have to suffer at One on Centre like I did.

First off, the elevators: the placement of the elevators is so poorly designed. 3 elevators are placed at opposite ends (2 and 1) of the building which is L shaped. For five months straight, the single elevator, which is on the side closest to campus, was broken, so everyday residents would have to walk all the way to the other side to take the elevator and then take the same path back to make their way to school. Multiple times during the year, 2 of the three elevators would be down, so the single functional elevator would stop on every single floor going down, adding around 6-10 minutes to your trip. Even when the elevators were working, the doors would sometimes not close, and the elevator would shake violently. The emergency call button inside the elevator is also broken, which I believe to be a huge safety hazard. Oftentimes, I would worry if I would be able to make it back out after stepping into the space.

Second, the management of deliveries: I’ve gotten 2 packages and 3 food deliveries stolen all within the span of a year. For the longest time, they would allow anyone to walk into the package storage room to grab packages without IDing them. Food delivery drivers aren’t allowed up, so the deliveries are left on a shelf outside, where anyone can easily come in and take it. After expressing my concern about the stolen deliveries to management, the lady essentially told me that she had seen my delivery arrive, and it was my fault that I came down 10 minutes after the food delivery arrival. Maybe I would be able to come down 10 minutes earlier if the elevators weren’t broken all the time. She also told me that getting my delivery stolen was a consequence of “living in the city” but strangely enough my friends living in the Schenley Apartments 1 minute walk away have never experienced this issue.

Third, the uncleanliness: the hallways and common spaces were always filthy. Sometimes, someone would spill food on the floor and it would not be cleaned up for 10+ days. In the fall months, we’re also blessed with a lantern fly infestation. Hundreds of them would surround the perimeter of the building, and dead carcasses littered the floors of the front office, mail room, elevators, and even in the hallways of the upper floors. There was no sign of management doing anything to fix or clean this up. This state persisted until winter started.

Fourth, the security: the key fob reader in the garage is always broken so anyone can enter through that entrance. I’ve heard about multiple cases of break-ins and entire computer setups being stolen from the computer lab.

Fifth: the deposit: as expected and as warned by many of my friends who have lived here before, it’s been extremely difficult to get my deposit back. They basically ignore any communications about the deposit and try to delay as much as possible.

I’m an international student, and I think that my time in Pittsburgh would have been significantly better if I didn’t live here. So please stay away from this building if you have the option to. There are several other buildings in the area with better conditions for a fraction of the price.

I hope that Google adds a 0 star option because I cannot think of anything more deserving of that rating than One on Centre. Perhaps if One on Centre redirected the time and effort that they put into replying to reviews and trying to ID the reviewer into actually bettering the apartment, they would finally be...

The building itself is very poorly built because they rushed the building process and so it even feels unsafe at times. This is the first year that people are living here and yet there are already cracks forming in the hallway. My hallway lights were out for a few weeks before they got around to fixing them. There are also constant fire alarms that go off on all of the floors. I live right below the rooftop lounge and you can hear everything that goes on upstairs as well as people using the lounge bathroom from our room. The sound insulation is absolutely terrible in this building. When we moved in, our toilets, dishwasher, and lights all did not work. When our friend moved in, they put him in a completely different room than what he was promised and was also missing a dryer. The elevators break too often, making it hard to make it down with so many residents. There was puke in front of the elevator in the lobby and it took them longer than it really should have to clean it up. Things that we were promised to us when we signed the lease (Novermber-ish) were not given to us. We were promised a secure building with security but was given a broken garage door that anyone can walk in through. Even the doors that do need a key fob to get in don't work half the time and I have to wait outside until the door finally opens. We were promised to be able to nail things into our walls, decorate in any way we wanted, but then told upon move-out that any damage to our walls we would have to pay for. I would have been able to deal with all this if they just hadn't promised it to us upon signing our lease. I had a certain expectation upon moving in because of all the promises they made to us, but was met with only disappointment.

My roommate moved out earlier than I did and I requested the staff to notify me when they came to do the room check, b/c I was going to have family over that week and wanted to plan around them coming. They promised me they would but then came the very next morning, banging on my door. When I told them that they would need to come another time, they began to get frustrated with me for not letting them into my apartment, even though I had made a request that they promised to keep. This was not the first time that the staff here was superficially helpful.

Yes we do have great amenities here but it is literally the only good thing about living here. Half of the good reviews on here are either from people that work for OOC or people that wrote the review only because OOC promised them a giftcard for writing one. Buildings that are half the price of this one have MUCH better staff and have significantly less issues than this one. For the amount that rent is, I expected better relationships with the workers and for less issues to arise. I will definitely not be...