Youngstown Flats — Attraction in Seattle

I moved into Youngstown Flats in August of 2022. The move-in experience was great, and the apartment was spotless when I got the keys. It is not a brand-new building, but everything is well maintained. As I moved during business hours, I was able to have one of the three elevators locked down for me, and they were thoughtful towards existing residents by putting notes on each floor that the elevator was locked down for a move-in so they could use the other elevators or stairs.

The amenities in the building are some of the best I’ve had in an apartment community. The gym is small but well equipped (West Seattle Health Club is only a block away). The first-floor cinema room is great for having friends over to watch movies or sports. There is also a lounge on the first floor, and it is almost always available too. My favorite is the rooftop and lounge on the sixth floor. Lots of space to sit, firepits, grills, lights and great views of downtown Seattle. If you want to reserve the space there is a fee which seems odd to me (it’s also pricey) but if you get there first and have friends over, other residents stay away.

Speaking of Seattle, the location is excellent as the building is right off the bridge and it takes less than 10 minutes to be down by the stadiums and in the downtown area in general. Getting to the Junction, Alki Beach and even Sea-Tac is a breeze.

The office staff has changed since I moved in, but everyone is very helpful and open to having you drop by for a chat as you wait for your coffee; there’s a free coffee machine for residents across from the leasing office. Since Christian came onto the team, there have been more community events and you can tell he really likes his job, which in property management isn’t always the case. My dog loves getting a treat from Christian after every walk.

The maintenance and custodial staff are all very friendly and responsive, especially James. I’ve only entered two maintenance requests for minor issues, and both were handled within a day or two.

I know it’s a Greystar issue and not the community’s staff but there are a few things that would make this place a better place. Having the exterior windows cleaned more often, or for the first time. I’ve been here 15 months and they’ve never been washed. I have views of downtown Seattle from my living room, but the dirt buildup is too much to appreciate it. Have the stairs either re-carpeted or better yet, replaced with vinyl. They’re heavily stained and are torn in some places. Have the carpeted hallways cleaned at least once a year. There is one trash shoot on one side of the building so everyone that doesn’t live right next to it has to walk their trash over, which if you’ve ever taken trash out, you know sometimes bags leak and I can’t imagine the amount of gross things on them. Power wash the area where the compost bins are kept in the garage. They are right next to the main elevator and the smell gets very... well, compost like. Make some sort of up upgrade to the countertops in the bathrooms. The cheap laminate ones with top mounted sinks are not good, especially given the...

I’m going to speak on my experience when I lived there in 2019 to 2021. There were a lot of pros and cons to this complex. The pros were that it was renovated, modern, and the rooftop deck where you can overlook the whole city of Seattle you literally cannot beat that. However…. There were a lot of things that went wrong here when I lived here. Getting packages was always a mess. I would get notifications that I had a package I would get down there and there was two separate occasions where I literally could not find my package because the mail room was such a mess. Imagine weeks of peoples packages stacked up in the mail room. Yet nobody ever grabs them? Do they do anything to supplement this? No. A lot of residents were very frustrated with that mail situation. The hallways constantly reeked of weed and I’m cool with cannabis. But the scent got a little overwhelming for me. The hallways were extremely loud people would constantly be slamming doors or talking loudly and screaming in the halls. You constantly had to listen to drunk idiots being loud as hell. Management was iffy. I did not have pleasant experiences with the former manager. I had a better experience with the property manager and the leasing consultant. Here’s something interesting; the day I moved out, I thought I was on the punked show. (I’m going to get a little personal with my review because I had to work at the same workplace with this person for several months and I feel that I can honestly speak on the experience of having to work with this individual.) I go to return my keys, and I see in the Leasing Office this girl that I used to work with at another workplace. This woman was literally the most incompetent person I had ever met in my life and yet they hired her… oh boy 🙃. And I don’t use that word lightly to describe somebody, but this person was an exception. If yall had to deal with this lady, I’m so so sorry. Her name was Gia. I’m not scared to call her out, I have nothing to lose. She is absolutely insufferable. I don’t feel bad exercising my freedom of speech to communicate the dissatisfaction of my former co-worker suddenly working at my old complex. But I will call her out for potentially worsening the community that was once Youngstown Flats. I hope for everyone’s sake she isn’t there anymore. She was the kind of person that would ignore any of your requests., she was the epitome of “yeah it’s my job, but I’m not gonna do it at all and I don’t really care.” That’s not somebody you should have working at a complex like this. She was not qualified for the position whatsoever. Seeing the more recent reviews shows that this place fell off bad. What a shame. I imagine the cost alone is what drives people away from here as well. But yeah, avoid this place if you can. It’s not...

This was by far the worst apartment complex I've lived in. We lived here for a year and a half, and not long after moving in we got a new upstairs neighbor who was just. so. loud. Blasting music, hosting parties late into the night, exercising, stomping, dropping stuff – it didn't matter what time it was, she was always making noise. It took a couple months of calling the leasing office for them to finally reach out to the neighbor, who ignored them. In November 2021, I spoke to the new community manager Adam for the first time. I told him that the constant upstairs noise was really wearing on my mental health/affecting my sleep, and was there anything he could do? He told me he could issue a 10-day comply or vacate notice to her. Great! A couple weeks went by and the noise hadn't stopped, so I called again. Adam answered, and I asked if he had given the notice. His response: "Yeah, about that... our lawyers said we can't issue the notice due to the moratorium..." And then silence, he didn't say anything more. It took some nudging for him to confirm that they couldn't do anything else. Which is fine, I get that there were limitations because of the eviction moratorium. But why did that much time go by without ever getting a call from Adam once he learned this? My boyfriend had similar calls with Adam where he came across as very apathetic.

Noise aside, there are still numerous other awful things about the building. Parts of our unit were straight up falling apart upon move-in. The trash rooms were constantly jammed and left by maintenance for several days at a time, making the hallways reek. The dog run and parking garages had dog poop left everywhere. We were woken up most mornings by a neighbor's barking dog. The parking garage doors and elevators were broken more often than not. There were 3 separate times that everyone had to evacuate when the fire alarm went off in the middle of the night/early morning (with seemingly no fires), which the office never acknowledged after.

After multiple package room break-ins, it became mandatory for packages to be delivered directly to residents through a third party, Fetch. They've lost my packages in their warehouse. Their couriers ignored delivery instructions/timeframes, even forging my signature and leaving deliveries at my door when I wasn't home. My boyfriend received a package through them that was cut open and missing an item. The office never responded to my email about a package stolen from my doorstep. Not long before we moved out, we received an email stating there'll be a monthly $20 fee for Fetch starting in June and deliveries from other services will be refused.

I'd recommend steering clear until new...