Trace Midtown — Local services in Atlanta

Wow, where to begin. Both the negatives and positives with a HUGE SHOUT OUT and THANK YOU to NEW management Keshyia, Kenya, James, Billy, maintenace team, and Peachtree Pest Control.

P.S. Reviews under me are with the old management who turned this place to a 1 star apartment complex and they are gone (9/24)

Let the saga begin: I moved to Trace Apartments in 2022 for pediatric fellowship from NC after touring what appeared to be a BEAUTIFUL well-managed and kept complex. I needed a place that was quiet, comfortable, affordable, and close to the hospital I was working knowing sleep was so important as a physician switching between days and night shifts.

The first 9 months were wonderful minus a few ups and downs until two things happened 1) management changed and 2) coackroaches started showing up. One, two... I figured that was normal given living in the city, being in ATL, being in an apartment, etc etc. I blew off the first two until the numbers started racking up: 20+ (small ones).

Cue 5 months later with management at that time not taking my concerns seriously despite telling them of all the reviews from the past complaining of the same thing and making false promises with the pest control group at THAT time not doing what I requested them to do (bombing the place) and simply spraying randomly without finding the source which was verified by my neighbors camera...then, I found small roaches in areas that made no sense, i.e: my room and bed (gross, I know) with an entire photo album of different areas I found them in and over $100 in traps and sprays. They kept coming despite me vacumming, wiping around, etc with no rhyme or reason. Then, the manager at that time who heard my original complaints was let go and our apartment complex was empty again without any guidance or help with many projects started at the complex that were half done.

Desperate to leave, exahusted from lack of sleep, being paranoid for sleeping in my bed or walking around barefoot in my OWN APARTMENT, I printed off all the photo evidence and messages sent back and forth with old management doing so much as meeting with the regional manager I found in the hallway at that time and introducing myself. Talking with him, he made me aware of yet a new group of management that was coming in and asked I wait to give them the opportunity to talk to me and that he would handle it. Cautiously I agreed- only because of my experiences of the original management who promised the same thing with no outcomes.

Fast forward a few weeks- I have never in my life felt so heard, answered, taken care of in all aspects from the new team at Trace. Keshyia, Kenya, James, Billy, maintenance staff, peachtree pest control have truly turned what was so uncomfortable and quite frankly, hell, to the comfortable place I originally signed a lease for. Keshyia and Kenya were there for my tears, frustration, multiple emails, discussions day by day and they got things DONE and were always checking up on me- from hiring a new pest control, to finding the main source, to scheduled sprays every week, to starting the week long process or longer that it'll take to TRULY get rid of the roaches that plagued my place and others, to helping me move and hiring movers from me, to ensuring that my comfort was the utmost priority. It's not anyone at Trace's fault they're having to play catch up from terrible management in the past- but they sure as hell are charging in and making it feel more like home than its been. Since my move, I’ve slept better and felt so much more comfortable- couldn't be more grateful :) Every apartment has issues- and WILL have issues at one point or another. The most important thing that matters is the team or family that takes care of you. Trace has a way to go to rebuild itself from its predecessors but I wouldn't trust anyone else to be able to do so with such kindness, understanding, warmth and CARE: Keshyia, Kenya, James, and Billy.

Thank you to the new Trace team who actually cares about you and makes you feel heard. Please...

Do not live here. I am currently in my second year here and cannot wait to move out. I have watched this place go downhill rapidly. In the last year the following things have happened:

1 - At least one elevator in the building will always be broken. Currently, two of the building's four elevators are down. Earlier this week, three of the four elevators were down, leaving seven floors' worth of residents only one working elevator. 1a - As a side note, there have been multiple fires and/or emergencies requiring the deployment of fire trucks since I moved into my unit in early 2022. There are also disabled residents that live in the building. If the elevators are always broken, how long will it be before one of them doesn't get out during the an evacuation? Additionally, I have on more than one occasion taken the stairwell to get to the parking garage (see note above about the lack of working elevators), only to find that you cannot exit some of the stairwells due to the doors being locked. That is a massive fire hazard that I still encounter randomly on occasion. 1b - On at least one occasion in the last year, we have had an actual fire in a unit. Except many people didn't know about it, because the fire alarms didn't go off in our building. And to be clear, in my case, it wasn't as though I was far away from the fire or anything like that. Instead, it was on my floor, just down the hallway from my unit. There was no fire alarm. There was a notification on the apartment's app at approximately 12:30 AM, letting everyone know that there was a fire. So I guess the property expects people to wake up in the middle of the night to check the app to see if it truly is an emergency. Personally, I wait for one of my neighbors to call me, because the fire alarms still are not fixed, about 10 months after this happened.

2 - At the start of June, the maintenance team came around and replaced the fire extinguishers in each unit. However, they chose not to remove them, instead leaving a bright red fire extinguisher in front of each unit's door. At the time of writing this, it has been almost three months and they are still littering the hallways.

3 - The air conditioning in one of the building's common areas has been out for a few months now. Whenever asked about, we're told that it will be fixed in a "few weeks" and that the team is just waiting for a part to come in. It it only a matter of time until that particular common area develops mold due to the summer heat and humidity.

4 - In July, the management team had an outside vendor come in and inspect every unit's fire sprinkler system. This inspection consisted of two people entering the unit, looking at two to three of the sprinklers, and leaving. When asked if they wanted to check the additional sprinklers in our unit's bathroom and/or bedroom, they declined and said that it was not needed.

5 - There are weekly emails "reminding" residents to not park in the visitor spots, under threat of towing. However, the same cars park there daily/nightly with no repercussion.

6 - On July 6th, an email was sent out to the entirety of the apartment building via the apartment's app, Carson, promoting a race-based gathering. The email included a QR code and link to a private WhatsApp group. While I am sure that this was in no way malicious, it is not something that is appropriate to be sending to an entire building via the apartment management company's software.

There are certainly other issues that I have experienced during my time here, but I wanted to focus on the management of the building. You will have a crazy neighbor regardless of where you live, that is unavoidable. However, bad management is easily avoidable. You can walk one block in any direction and find a newer building with nicer amenities, usually for a lower cost. Save your time and skip...

Update 8/5/2024 The image I attached was removed. To clarify the image isn't what the pool looks like now but what it looked like as of 5/13. I wanted to illustrate how terrible communication was because at that point, no communication had been sent that the pool would not open on 5/18/24 despite it looking like that. Also I wanted to note that they never drained and deep cleaned the pool after it looked like that. They just had a little robot go around in the pool to take the buildup off.

5/16/2024 I noticed my review was removed so I am reposting it. All prior updates below.

Update 5/13/24 First up, that pool renovation that was supposed to be completed this Saturday, May 18th, is definitely not going to be done. I took a picture today of how it's going, and in my opinion, it's not going well. I've attached a picture of how it looks.

Also, last week there was a fire in one of the units that was bad enough to activate the water sprinkler system. The fire alarms did not go off though. We were notified of a fire emergency and to evacuate via the building's chat app/email. Luckily the fire was isolated and everything was ok, but why would the fire alarms not go off? I'd rather they went off when the fire was still isolated than wait until it no longer is for them to go off.

Original Review Below Management changed in September 2023, and the new management team has been terrible.

Tldr; The elevators have mostly been down the past 6 months, new management team's communication is poor, they focus on "improvements" instead of fixing things that need to be fixed (elevators), and the pool is closed for the next month and half for "improvements"

The elevators have been broken on and off for the past 6 months. There were times where elevators were down and there was no notification from management even though they knew of the outage. I reported two of these to the concierge and was told they were already aware of it both times. No idea how long they had known before that either. They'll also lock one of the elevators for people moving in or out which is fine, but they will then leave it locked for days or sometimes over a week or longer basically making another elevator unavailable. Currently, one elevator is closed for a few weeks for repairs, and multiple times (two in the past week alone) both the elevators on our side of the building will go down without warning leaving a single working elevator for the entire building.

One of the most annoying things new management has done is the constant "improvements" that don't feel like they add anything. They repainted the future resident parking area, pressure washed that same parking area and the outside sidewalks, added a new coffee machine to the resident area, repainted the pool deck, and replaced the gym floor (probably the best actual improvement). The worst part of this though is that last week, they decided they wanted to close the pool deck for a month and a half to redo it entirely. While I'm sure the improvements will be great, why could this not have been done when the repainting was done during the winter when people weren't going to the pool? Why was it even repainted to begin with? The weather is starting to get nice, and the pool actually had a good amount of people using it until then. The notice they sent to inform us of the pool closure was sent on April 1st. The start date of the pool closure in that notice was April 1st... We were given 0 days of notice. What if I had made plans to have friends over that afternoon, week, or weekend to grill out on the pool deck? It would've been nice to know...