The Arts Apartments at Ocean Drive — Local services in Corpus Christi

Warning.... long but honest review. This apartment gets 1 Star for the location, but other than that our experience here was pretty horrible. The first thing you notice is pet feces everywhere! At one point we even had them on our doormat. The small grassy area directly in front of our apartment was always covered in feces. This of course made the roach problem awful, worse then anywhere else we lived in Corpus. The whole complex smells awful!

The pier may look nice online, but don’t be fooled. It is surrounded by trash, overflowing trashcans, dead fish, and also smells pretty bad. If there’s any wind at all the first part of the pier is underwater. The residents were also rude with people yelling and running throughout the complex well after midnight on all nights of the week. The windows didn’t open in our apartment and no air circulated EVER which may have been a good thing because of the awful smell from outside. Any time someone smoked weed in our building (which happened frequently) we would smell it for days and it was especially bad in the kitchen and closet. Some people have professional jobs and really can’t go to work smelling like this!

Aside from that, the main problem we had here was the constant leaking from our ceiling. This started happening about a month after we moved in and it forced us to move out early as the conditions became unlivable, with mold/mushrooms growing out of the ceiling and water damaging our personal property on more than one occasion. This wasn’t some tiny drip from the ceiling, it was actually raining in our apartment! The maintenance staff was responsive but never actually addressed the root of the problem. The leak would switch spots in the ceiling and eventually it started pouring water out of the fan/light fixture. We were worried about the risk for electrocution as well as slipping/tripping every time we came in the apartment. We had to move our bed, dresser and personal belongings (which had already gotten wet) to one corner of the room since we had a studio apartment.

My husband and I were constantly sick from the mold problem and the unsafe conditions forced us to move out early at great expense to us. The apartment made no attempt to fix our final leak (the one from the fan) and tried to blame the other leaks on the people living above us. They offered no solutions to help us, not even offering us another apartment to move into temporarily (they have many vacant apartments).

We tried to get our last month of rent back since we had to move out 2 months before end of lease. Of course we signed a lease agreement but conditions like these were obviously not our expectation. The apartment manager was not able to help us with this and instead referred us to her supervisor at the Medve group. The supervisor was very unresponsive, we had to call her for an entire month before she returned our calls. When she finally did call me back, she let it slip that this particular apartment had been having these leaking issues for months before we moved in!!! This whole company is just so dishonest and the “supervisor” was very rude and also offered no solutions.

Save yourself and DO NOT move into this awful, overpriced...

The Arts Apartments is a decent apartment complex if you're looking to live on the water, on Ocean Drive, and you're not a particular renter with super high expectations.

Pros: We did have a massive roof leak in our original apartment and they did move us and credit us for the issue, but it took us advocating for ourselves to get this completed over a 2-week process. This went up the chain to the actual management company and they communicated with us for this one singular issue. They are somewhat responsive to maintenance requests until you're moving out, but all-in-all, they're alright. We never really had an emergency or a problem outside of it raining through our ceiling.

We never had pest infestations. The most common occurrence which was rare were the big palmetto roaches. Not a big deal.. as it’s hot, there are palm trees throughout the area, and the apartment is on the water.

There is a nice fishing pier. It's a great pier to walk on at night/go fishing. It's actually peaceful.

Mari "Madi" the newer Property Manager that came in at the end 2022/early 2023 has been working very hard to get The Arts at a higher standard.

The AC in our apartment got COLD and it was great.

Subpar:

Maintenance is somewhat responsive unless you're moving out, and then.. it seems to fall off.. the only post notice move out issue we had was our only kitchen light burnt out, they replaced it, it burnt out within 2 weeks and then it didn't get replaced, again. It was a fancy circular bulb.

There is not enough parking, yet alone.. covered parking. Don't stick out of your parking space too far or you will get towed.

The pool - it's a hit or miss on the pool being clean/swimmable.

Cons: Vehicles being vandalized, a few packages being "misplaced", and residents who don't pick up their dog poop are the only main issues we had. The biggest package that went missing was a $400 package of diabetic medicine, yes I actually need it for medical reasons, and the front desk lady (it was not Mari "Madi") couldn't have cared less... but, that's not really all the actual physical unit apartment issue. Just its surroundings/typical complex drama.

Watch your billing and make sure you keep receipts of payments when you're moving out and expect to be hit with a delayed water bill. (2 months late in our case.) Just make sure to give them a forwarding address so you can get the bill and don't call asking about it because by the time you get an answer or follow-up, you'll start getting emails from a debt collector.

You get what you pay for - inexpensive apartment off Ocean Drive on the water for residents that aren't picky. Throw in a gym and offer assigned parking (paid for covered parking) and it would be much better.

It's really not a terrible place to be - on the water without the frills and for some people that's ideal.

The only reason we moved is because we were looking for more space and a few more amenities. That's all....

Final review. Staff is friendly but this place is falling apart. Rent should be like 800 for this place or less. Only amenities we had was the view and pool. Parking is horrible. They tow a lot of cars. Bird poop horrible. Everything is run down and old. The worst is the plumbing. Place is leaking all over the place. New maintenance team is alright. Place needs a renovation plan. Energy is so expensive for no reason. I run no ac/heater and nothing plugged in and still get charged a lot for energy. Meter is very old so be ready to spend a lot on energy for no reason no matter what. This place is getting better as of December but not worth what I pay. Request gets fixed and problems move through the system pretty fast now because of new maintenance people. I moved in April of 2024 For my rent I pay 1300 for a very very small old ocean view 1 bed 1 bath apartment after all the fees they throw at you. Base rent like 1149. 1300 and you pay extra 10 dollars to pay your rent on time online. That feels like a scam and should be illegal. 40 dollars for trash and 5 dollars for pest. (SEPTEMBER 8th 2024 VALET ALWAYS FORGETS MY TRASH). They threaten to charge 50 dollars if you leave your trash outside on the 2 days they don’t arrive. What if they forget the trash on days they do come? Do we get compensated? Heck no!!!!I never seen not one pest guy since I been here(you have to request him to come on Thursday). They need to spray outside because I seen cockroaches everywhere still outside and around. New maintenance guy is very nice and fixes stuff quick. Update September/ they finally fixed all my move in request for my apartment+ 1 star. maintenance guy is always nice it is not them that make this place bad, they just follow orders. The age of the buildings doesn’t help. Portables don’t do enough to live for Ac problems need at least 2. Fishing pier door is broken. A lot of random people fish the pier(people that don’t live here). They leave trash and crime. We need a new door and private codes so other people don’t take the one and pretty much only amenity we have next to the pool. THE beach is always littered with trash. Wish they took advantage of the beach and make it look nice. This apartment is very very old. Pipes suck and leak. Parking is bad I never find good parking and always have to park next to the salt water. Just recently not managements fault but someone stole a car tire beginning of December. Crime in the area is getting bad. Someone got shot at the cemetery across the street. People breaking into cars and stealing items. No security. Speed bumps galore. Have fun getting new struts...