Park Place Apartment Homes — Local services in Irvine

I’ve been a resident at Park Place for just over a year now, having recently and reluctantly renewed my lease in May. My initial review from 2019 still stands true, and Missy in the leasing office is by far still amazing. I love where I live and I’ve learned how to tolerate being “nickeled and dimed “ for things such as trash service, which is more than triple what I have paid at other Irvine Co properties, and even more than any Orange County homeowner pays — which leads me to believe it might be a great little slush fund and profit center for the complex. I mean, come on, $35 per month multiplied by a minimum of 600 units is well over $250,000.00 in annual trash service. Oh believe me, I have asked questions. After 3 unanswered requests for details on why the bill is so high and how it is calculated, I am giving up and posting here so you can make an educated decision and ask for yourself before signing a lease. Hey, the goal of every business is profit, and I am okay with that as long as I am proud of where I live, am convinced value exceeds price, and can be assured of a great client experience wherein there’s impeccable attention to detail. Speaking of attention to detail...this community has gone through its up and downs with regard to cleanliness, manicured grounds, and maintenance. As with any multi-family community, the level of attention rises and falls with changes in onsite leadership and general manager. I mention this because, of late, there’s a noticeable decline and change in the appearance and cleanliness of hallways, pathways, and landscaping: Trees, plantings, and bushes are completely overgrown, walkways are cluttered with debris, and hallways and unit entrances have trash, spills, and stains making it look far from the name Park Place portends — a luxury, resort style community. As well, and of even more concern, is Park Place having turned a blind eye and their effort to sugar coat their current and historical rampant theft problem. Park Place, just admit it... we all see it, know it, and yes....some of us have been the victim of it —- YOU have a problem! Now it's time to do something about it. Please explain how in a 36 hour period, 2 Mercedes get jacked up on blocks, and get their wheels stolen? Not parked in visitor parking, but in a “secured” underground “gated” facility. When brought to Park Place’s attention, their response was flippant, unapologetic, and sarcastic: “Do you expect us to have security in every corner?” No, but installing additional cameras, doing security walls with check-in points, being transparent with your residents and proactively reporting incidences of vandalism and theft would be a great way to turn things around. I was excited and encouraged to utilize bike storage cages for my bike. All fine and great until your (locked and tethered) bike is stolen (mine was). Even worse is when you realize it could have only been stolen by another resident or someone with authorized access to a key-fob secured gate. Then I noticed there are security cameras!! Woo Hoo!! I could at least solve this “who-done-it” mystery quickly and efficiently. Well...not so fast, Sherlock. Their representative went on to say, Once you have filed a police report we will research the footage from those cameras. However, be aware, this could take a great deal of effort, and we really don’t have time to do so.” WOW, really? Thank you....for nothing. Be it far from me to inconvenience you to assist me in helping YOUR client (aka ME) to recover $1,200. Now on to the Park Place response to COVID-19. I know it has been frustrating for all to deal with unprecedented circumstances, so I won't belabor the point, but suffice to say that having to go without amenities such as the pools, community common areas, and access to other services has been a major disappointment. Especially since as a resident you buy into the existence and availability of amenities and services as a big part of the value when choosing to live here and pay for resort style living. I have Pictures of everything on my yelp...

I mostly love living here at Park Place!! However, after living here two years, we are planning on moving out of state before an additional 12-month lease would be up. Not only did our rent go up after the year (that was expected), but they tacked on an additional $500/month for going month to month. We could even tell them when we were going to move, and they wouldn't offer a shorter-term lease with a lower monthly rate. And just today, I got an email that they are soon INCREASING THE MONTHLY RATE TO $740 EXTRA!! I am pretty disgusted with the Irvine Company for choosing to try to squeeze every single dollar out of people they possibly can. We are already paying plenty to live here, but $760 extra just because we aren't locking down a 12-month lease? Ridiculous. I used to get annoyed with all the people that hate the Irvine Company, but now I definitely understand.

I think part of the reason they are trying to get us locked into a lease is because of the many apartment communities opening or about to open nearby. (I'm sure those will have some pretty good deals moving in.) One community is a block away and I'm glad we should be leaving before it fills up, since rush hour traffic will be that much worse (Michelson gets really slowed down).

The place is in a good location and is beautifully maintained, amenities (especially the clubhouses, pools, hot tubs, and grills) are great, and the staff is very friendly and helpful. Maintenance is always super quick to fix any problems (like the kitchen sink that unfortunately won't stay working), we love our view, and we actually like the loud 405 traffic white noise and that it's so close to get to several major roads. Boomers is right there, and you will definitely hear it til at least 10 pm at night, much later in the summer. One night they blasted music until 4 am. (You could still hear it easily through the closed windows.) They have some fun community events. There's a bike trail right across the bridge and LA Fitness a couple blocks away (though there's a nice apartment gym at the complex), a nature reserve, and several restaurants nearby. And we like the community feel, many people are friendly!

More negatives: Another major thing is that there is a lot of smoking that goes on, especially along walkways where smoking isn't allowed but it doesn't seem to get stopped. We have to close our windows every night because smoke from people outside gets in our apartment almost every single night and it makes me sick and we don't want to expose our baby to that. The grounds crew works really hard to keep the complex so clean, but there are always people throwing their cigarette butts on the ground and it makes the place look a little trashy. Even though they get picked up basically every day, there are just a lot of smokers here and some of them are not courteous of neighbors (along with some of the dog owners, you get people like that everywhere, I guess).

Construction is going on right across the street and it's a bummer since it's really loud and dirty. And it will lead to more traffic.

They work their cleaning people to the bone, they are here every day of the week because they are short staffed.

The elevators are REALLY slow, like seriously, terrible. Some days are better than others. And sometimes pet owners let their dogs do their business in the elevators and don't clean it up... it's incredibly disgusting.

The last complaint is that moving trucks are constantly parking where they shouldn't and the worst ones get in the way of people driving in and out of parking garages. We have almost gotten in two accidents because of this because people try to pull in around the movers and there is almost no visibility around corners. They have to use the opposing traffic lane to get in and people drive too fast around the corners so it's not a good situation. (There really should be some sort of ticket or something for those moving trucks to stop this.)

All in all, Park Place is a beautiful place to live but they will take advantage of you if you go...

Rather poor for "A Home That You Will Love" Summary: 2 out of 5 stars Resume: If you are a student, or a smoker, or a person, who comes to one's apartments just to sleep during night time, then it will work for you. If you want to enjoy your stay, or you have a family - consider choosing another place to spend $20-35K+ a year

We've been living in the complex for quite a while, so we've been able to experience all possible stuff.

price 2/5: on the expensive side within options both in Irvine company and outside of it, though the price is dictated by proximity to college, elevator and underground parking availability

amenities 5/5: complex is new, so everything is rather clean and nice, including kitchen appliances, elevators, pool areas, cleaning personnel is washing everything all the time, our elevator is being thoroughly cleaned almost every day (even when it's clean), parcel lockers are of great use as well

location 3/5: location is convenient, 5 minute drive from grocery and close to all Irvine locations, and close to 405, some windows are facing it right away, the level of noise is above average, though you can find some quite corners in depth of the complex, plus carting in boomers and airport, so in total 3 out of 5

pet-friendly 2/5: complex claims to be pet friendly and dog locations are only 1-2 floor facing the street - that's a lie, one of our neighbors have a dog living on 5th floor (and they live here over a year), recently one more guy moved in with the dog randomly barking 24/7, cannot say that it's that bad, but shows that management is irresponsible

service 2/5: despite the fact that service team is responding quickly to all tickets the quality of the fixes is rather poor, some of tickets took more than one iteration to fix, and some were not fixed at the end; one more irritating thing is that even when you specify that service team should were shoe-covers they won't do so if you won't be present when they come; not being fond of cleaning all floors after a bulb change

management 1/5: everyone is friendly and welcoming, though absolutely useless when it comes to solving some real residents problems, when you need something done you would have to come and remind about yourself multiple times not mentioning phone calls

security 1/5: yes, there is a whole security team out there, though I'm not sure what they are doing, multiple times I've been watching a security guy walking by residents drinking beer near the pool from the glass (when it's prohibited to take glass near the pool), few times I saw residents coming with bottles of wine and glasses near the same pool, not talking about smokers, which is the another problem. Moreover, our friends car was robbed on gated underground parking for residents.

smoking 0/5: yes, 0 stars even if you cannot select so; complex claims to offer smoke free common areas, and you can see brochures about it in the elevators, but when you leave elevator you will surely find some cigarette butts on your path to play room, or near the pool, sometimes in the elevator and underground parking, and almost every day you can find someone smoking near BBQ/pool area, or even standing near the club house or leasing office with cigarette in their hands. It looks like smoking doesn't bother anyone from management. Even if you will complain - nothing will change. I guess it's easier to make someone move out, than ban smoking.

family-friendly 0/5: not even a small playground, no family/kids events (for a long time since an ill-organized event with movies near the pool), and finally - your neighbors are allowed to smoke on their patios/balconies, so you can forget about fresh air for your family. When I was complaining about similar problem - a manager from leasing office offered me to close all windows and doors, which means to live in a box without fresh air, which is nonsense and...