One Light Luxury Apartments — Local services in Kansas City

For such expensive “luxury” apartments I was disappointed by the quality of the apartments and amenities, specifically:

1. Apartment blinds do not block any light: I had issues the with the sun in the morning and the sprint center lights at night shining directly through the floor to ceiling east side bedroom windows.

2. Noise: I expected some outside noise living downtown I also expected “luxury” apartments to have some sound-proofing, Onelight has none. Intensely loud noise from P&L events as often as 4 nights a week running as late as 2-3am. I was sold on the prospect of seeing free concerts from my patio but very few apartments actually have a view of the P&L stage and the music is rarely clear enough to enjoy.

3. Cheap furnishings and appliances: the floors were a fake floor board print and the walls had cheap paint that rubs off on your clothes if you bumped it. Dishwasher doesn’t clean the dishes properly. Clothes washing machine is insanely loud and so is the A/C. Expect to be running the A/C and heating a lot as apartment insulation is poor. Fire Alarms/Evacuations are also frequent.

4. Inconvenient Parking / Traffic: The apartment parking is in the lower levels of a public garage (shared with Cosentino’s, Onelife Fitness etc.) and the building has a separate old elevator to access the basement levels. It takes 10 minutes to go from your apartment down to the basement and drive your car back up to the street level. Multiple times it’s taken me 20-30 minutes to drive down Walnut St (from 12th Street) to get into the garage because of the event/concert traffic. Garage gate passes are faulty and frequent gate malfunctions add to the daily congestion. Onelight doesn’t own/operate the garage and takes no responsibility for any issues. Onelight validates guest parking up to 3 hours, an overnight stay is $25 WITH validation. No free guest passes.

5. Elevators: Only 3 elevators for a building with 25 levels and over 300 apartments and usually one elevator is reserved for movers or is broken, a lot of waiting.

6. Pool: One Light shares the pool with the Onelife gym it’s often overcrowded with more gym members at the pool than actual residents. The pool has bar service but management do not allow residents to bring their own food or drink into the pool area when the bar is operating (every weekend and public holiday). This effectively forces you to purchase any food and drink from the bar, its expensive and service is slow. The pool pumps loud clubbing music on weekend. 1 free guest per leaseholder, additional guests at $10 per person.

Unprofessional Management The residents and customer service are not a priority. Management was slow and required persistent follow-up often deferring issues to other members of management making issue resolution slow.

Prior to move-in management was unresponsive about important details such as move-in time, paying rent, etc. finally responding about how make an initial rent payment on the morning of my move in day and informing me I wouldn’t be able to move in unless payment was received immediately. Apartment keys were not available on move in day and I was told come back and “try again” a couple hours later. The loading dock was double booked and my movers couldn't upload for almost an hour after they arrived. There was no concern or apology considering this was costing me extra money with the movers.

Rent Increases are well above market, 6% on first lease renewal, another 3% only 10 months later. The renewal letters also threaten a 15% increase if you don’t sign up to a new lease term or otherwise give 60 days’ notice to vacant, so there is no flexibility in moving to a reasonable month-to-month rent arrangement if needed.

Overall If you’re looking for a place downtown and considering Onelight I recommend you look at other downtown options and don’t fall victim to the Onelight advertising hype. Better value can be found elsewhere downtown especially given the unprofessional/disorganized...

REALITY: NO LIGHT MISERY APARTMENTS Advertised as: One Light Luxury Apartments … TLDR version: If you are willing to spend 2.5 k/month for an apartment, please look at other apartment complexes first, many have floor-ceiling windows with much better amenities, finishes and more cooperative staff members. I lived in One light for 18 months. Later during my stay, I was told that the property manager has left and since the spot was basically open, no direct supervision was available at the complex and most individuals were acting on their own making things extremely chaotic. The interior finishes are horrific and extremely poor in quality. For example, the floor tiles will have indents, the carpet is cheap-poor quality and will have previous tenants furniture’s indents in it (that they will charge you for once you leave the unit, stating it was your fault having furniture in the apartment!). The oven is quick to pick up dirt and is low quality (burns food, cannot cook effectively using it). A bigger issue in relation to appliances is the AC. I can’t stress this enough, the AC is extremely noisy and loud and since you live in a fully exposed apartment (due to floor to ceiling windows), it’ll be on most of the time regardless of the season. On to what is even worse, the NOISE. It is a torture to live facing southeast. Even if you are a party person and you love music, you will end up fatigued from the daily loud parties that you will most definitely hear because of the poor quality of the windows (they isolate no external sounds whatsoever). I can’t stress this enough because when you tour, it’ll likely be daytime and you will think that the apartment may be great but just wait until you live in it for few weeks, and you’ll live through the awfulness of the loud noise coming from KC live. Amenities: The pool is shared with the gym’s people, you will always find outsiders taking over the pool area (it’s really a shallow fountain, not a real pool). Staff: Cleaning staff, front desk staff are excellent. They are nice and cooperative. They are really the only bright spot in this complex. Leasing office is horrible. I will provide an example to show you how we were clearly discriminated against. Given these loud noises from KC live that tortured us for months, I made an appointment to discuss this with the leasing office, I was literally brushed off in less than 2 minutes, without the leasing agent consulting with any supervisor or manager, without saying anything more than “there is nothing we can do”. Few weeks later, we run into a new neighbor on our floor and he tells us that he moved facing northwest after he complained to management about KC live extremely loud noises. If that is not discriminating, insulting and traumatic, I don’t know what is. Maintenance team/issues: We had to deal with an AC that is broken, produces awful smell that you always feel like you are living in a swamp. Unfortunately, maintenance team was unable to fix this issue and we had to live with this awful smell for more than a month. Despite submitting multiple requests, nothing would get done/changed. Trash chute: Red light is always on, meaning you can't throw your trash without contacting front desk or waiting forever. Price tag: A rip off for the quality of amenities, living situation, finishes and everything related to the complex. Honestly, you could live in a much better complex for much less than this in KC area. Feedback/communications: The management will not take any feedback from tenants based on my experience. Parking spots: The spots are generally tight, the funniest thing is that you will get assigned a parking spot but if you want a better one, they will ask you to pay 50 or a 100 extra USD for a better parking spot. Elevators: 3 elevators for a huge residential complex, you will have significant wait times particularly if someone is moving in or out (one elevator will be reserved) and during peak times of...

RENTERS BEWARE! This place is a total scam. They are sneaky and will try to rob you blind of your hard earned money right when you walk in door to rent an apartment. My wife and I were interested in moving to the city due to my job and decided to tour one light apartment. We saw the videos online and were very impressed by their apartment complex and facilities so we decided to check it out. After touring, we decided to put in an application. When putting in the application, we were told we had to put $700 down as part of the application process. 300 of the 700 was for a resort fee and 300 was for an application deposit and 100 was for an application fee. I felt it was strange for an apartment to first charge a resort fee and second demand you pay before even getting approved or signing a lease agreement. Paying 700 before even getting approved and sounded ridiculous. I have lived in many luxury apartments and never had to do that. We were apprehensive about the fees however Clinton the “senior leasing specialist” assured us that the 100 application fee was non refundable but the 600 was totally refundable and will either go towards the first months rent if we got approved and decided to rent or if we decided not to rent we will get it back. There was no conditions or stipulations given to us stating that we could lose the 600 dollars. Even though we were not too hot about it, we liked the apartment so we decided to apply.

After applying we got approved and they sent us the lease agreement. After reading the lease agreement even though we liked the place, their lease agreement was too restrictive with a lot of unusual fees and conditions that are uncustomary to renting an apartment. We also did not get a good vibe from the application process and we also liked another apartment complex that had a better atmosphere so we decide not to sign the lease and ask for our 600 dollars back from Clinton the “senior leasing specialist”. We than got a response from Clinton telling us that it has been 72 hours since we summited the application and the resort fee(for a “resort” we never stayed at) and the application deposit fee was non refundable and we can say goodbye to our 600 dollars. This was the first time hearing about the 72 hours policy and the 72 hrs expired before we even got approved for the apartment or even signed a lease agreement making a decision to live at the place. When we mentioned this Clinton the “senior leasing specialist”he said the 600 dollars goes towards them holding the apartment which was not communicated at any point during the process. Now I have to take time out my busy work schedule to fight a big Cooperation that is trying to steal 600 dollars from the little guy with their thieving scams. If they can try to steal from you during the application process imagine what stunts they will pull if you decide...