The Reserve — Local services in Evanston Township

I cannot stress enough how DANGEROUS it is to live here. The management and maintenance staff are not just lazy, incompetent, and dishonest, but rather they are malicious, vindictive, and vengeful as well.

A few building complaints: there are fire safety violations and other building code violations all over the property. Elevator violations, broken windows, etc. Overall the exterior of the property is in fair condition, but the interior, and building management is where the problems lie.

For example: assistant leasing agent Cynthia changed my assigned parking space without my knowledge or consent, and then she and her Managar Lizette rented out my parking space to someone else entirely. THEY LEASED OUT MY PARKING SPACE TO SOMEONE ELSE.

Then when I came home one day and someone was in my parking space, I parked by the trash until I could reach management to discuss it, and Lizette put a big tow sticker on my car, without ever looking at the plates and car info to see if it was registered to a resident. When I complained, they blamed the entire thing on me. Claiming I requested the change of parking assignment in a phone call one day, weeks prior. They provided no evidence of this because it was fabricated. They also hadn't charged me for parking yet, making it clear that the real problem is them. They quickly charged me for parking and told me to pick a new parking spot. I told them the OTHER tenant needs to pick a new spot, or I will contact an attorney. So they obliged, and let the new tenant who is under contract for the same spot as me, illegally park RIGHT NEXT TO ME, in the handicapped space, at the direction of management. Yet this person is not disabled. He was assigned to park there, right next to MY space, illegally, because management made a serious legal error and couldn't undo it. They set me up to be uncomfortable and intimidated by another resident, every day, until I move out. They should have given him a new parking space, well away from me.

In retaliation of my complaints, staff treated me abusively, by intimidating me, and speaking ill of me to other staff, to make them dislike me and treat me differently. It worked.

When my guest was assaulted on the property, I was begging a maintenance man to call police for me. My phone reception here is so poor, and their building internet so poor, 911 couldn't hear me on my call. The maintenence man, Oscar, gave me a rude face, and walked away from me. I turned around to see him quickly scurrying into the building to avoid helping me. HE IGNORED MY PLEAS FOR HELP CALLING 911, AND HID FROM ME INSTEAD!!!

Later, after police had left, my guest and I saw Oscar, and I told him I'm going to tell his boss what he did. How I begged him for help and he gave me a dirty look and rushed away and hid from me, rather than call 911 for help as I asked. He shrugged his shoulders at me and scurried away again.

This man was friendly to me and would greet me kindly, before the parking issues. The management turned him, and other building staff, against me, in retaliation of my very legitimate complaints about their disservice and malfeasance. This resulted in myself and my guests being in harms way on the property, when an incident of violence arose, and the staff present REFUSED to assist me in contacting police!!!

He still works here. Why? This man is a malicious, vindictive, dangerous member of staff to have on site. So are Lizette and Cynthia, whose personal anger at me is why others here treated me differently than they treated me before my complaints were lodged. This is a targeted effort by the staff to intimidate, and punish me, for raising concerns about their lies and incompetence, and the ways it was impacting my stay, in violation of our lease agreement.

Then Lizette and Cynthia began to interfere with my mail. This is a federal crime, punishable by prison time.

Due to their interference, I haven't received bills, my bank statements, several checks (totaling over $11,000 so far), mail from my doctors about my diagnostic cancer screenings,...

I spent two years (July 2020 - July 2022) here. Overall it is a good apartment. The price during the pandemic was fair (now it is pretty high..). My unit was fully renovated before I moved in and I like the vinyl floor in the living room which makes it easy to clean. The maintenance team is always responsive and supportive no matter before/after the change of the management.

I did not have much negative experience, except for the sensitive fire alarm / other people's car blocking my car in the garage / some delivery people did not know where to drop off the package. The most complain within the unit is the noisy A/C. It has two voltage levels: high and low, and usually low would be enough and high would be too noisy. The funniest part is that when you have low level for the cooling then you must switch the heating to high, and vice versa. This means that within a year you need to manually switch the voltage levels at least twice (you need to open the control panel to do so). The old A/C system is easy to switch; the new one is much more complicated so I need to call the team to help.. Another complain is the W/D, where the washer does not have enough power to spin.. Everytime I need to wash my towel (regular one bought from ikea) I need to wring it out myself and put it into the dryer.. The old W/D was good, so I do not really understand why they (old management) change it.. But those are really minor issues that do not significantly affect the quality of living here.

Overall, it is a good apartment and I recommend...

An awful place to live, and I am so glad to have moved out. I lived at the Reserve for three years, and it became an increasingly worse experience, with management increasing in their nickeling and diming of tenants to the point that they’re honestly just a joke. When I moved in, it was under a different management company, which was way better. The apartments are incredibly overpriced with poorly installed appliances (my completely renovated apartment had to have all of its appliances re-installed after they were incorrectly installed be the first time), and the appliances continued to break down after they had been fixed multiple times. The rent is inflated beyond what is reasonable to market value, and they don’t enforce the rules they create for their own amenities, making them nearly unusable- for example the pool- it’s practically always overcrowded by either screaming undergrads, or people who have invited so many guests that you can’t even use the pool. They also only give you access to amenities at certain times of the day, for example the coffee machine. So the amenities they list aren’t even really accessible. This was never the case with the old company. Not to mention, your packages constantly get stolen or lost due to their insecure package system. Living at the Reserve the last few years has been a nightmare experience- with so many options in Evanston, be sure to miss them. I couldn’t get out of there...