Galaxie High Rise Apartments — Local services in Madison

I genuinely do not understand why there are people complaining about their experiences living in this building. I've been here for nearly a year now and I've enjoyed every minute of it. Reading some of these reviews have actually frustrated me quite a bit, so I'm going to directly address many of those jaded perspectives. I also hardly ever write reviews but feel like these need to be directly addressed.

The rooms are HUGE (and honestly for a luxury building they are very fairly priced). Other luxury buildings I looked at are nowhere near as large. Even the studios in this building are over 600 square feet. It's also more expensive then low-end comparisons because it's not low-end. If you don't want to have the extra perks of a luxury building, then don’t live here.

It also objectively is not a loud building. I am living next to recent college graduates who I am pretty sure have people over quite frequently and I have literally never heard them. The concerts/games outside at Breese Stevens are not a problem at all if you just shut your near-noise-cancelling windows (although, I'm not sure how having a free concert from big name artist would ever be an issue?). There are actually people complaining about concerts that end at 10pm are too loud? I've been living here for a year and most of the time I don't even realize there's a concert until I leave the apartment to go do something. Also just to double down on this a little bit: how are you going to be mad at a building for concerts at a stadium near it? Most of us go to the common hangout rooms to watch the concerts for free with an amazing view. And if you're really mad about it, do your research (i.e., call the building) and make sure the apartment you're applying for is on the other side or something like that.

If you were deciding to look into living here, below are a few reasons from my perspective that might help you pull trigger on it. The rooms are very large and include every perk you need. Dishwasher, laundry, and central air all in the room. Most even have nice porches. The building management is great. Bryce is a really great guy and super helpful whenever you need anything. The place is really clean and quiet. You'll hear people in the hall as you would in any building, but almost never room to room. I don't even hear when the guy next to me runs his laundry machine (I hope he cleans his clothing because I've genuinely never heard it run). It's in a great location in my opinion. For the person complaining about the commute to campus, I do the same thing. There is a bus literally at the doorstep that takes like 4 stops to get onto campus. Not even joking, you literally walk out the front door and cross the street into the middle and max wait 15 minutes for a bus. I've never waited for an elevator longer than it to come to my floor. I'm not sure why people mentioned that in other reviews. There's a grocery store in the building. This is such a huge win. Groceries literally take me under 20 minutes for the whole experience. Regardless of how you feel about Festival, it is still extremely convenient

Tldr: I think this is a great building, I disagree with most of these negative reviews, and would recommend living...

Decent, but not the best. Like the commenters previously stated, there's many major things wrong with the apartment. But let's start out with the positives:

1. The location. If you're on the street NOT facing E Washington Ave (where I admit, there is a ton of noise, and the windows aren't sound dampening), you will probably not hear the loud noises/music coming from the cars blazing down E Washington Ave at 3am. I lived on the 5th floor with floor to ceiling windows on 2/4 of my walls. The view was astonishing.

2. It's difficult to hear the noises from your neighbors upstairs since the floors are concrete (at least for me).

3. Services seem to work well, had good communication with the apartment manager and things were fixed in a timely manner.

4. Safety. Seems pretty safe overall.

Now for the negatives:

1. Elevator breaks easily. Since there's a lot of floors and people living on each floor, there's a ton of in and outs, especially during peak hours (mornings before work, evenings after work). There's also only 2 elevators for the whole building, so it can take time to go in and out, unless you're close to a staircase and don't mind walking. Good luck if you're in the penthouse. Also, people are constantly moving in and out, causing the elevators to slow. I waited 5 minutes once for an elevator and then decided just to take the stairs. There's no freight elevator so moving is a pain.

2. COLD. The windows are beautiful, when it's warm. But the shades don't block out sunlight, so there's tons of light streaming in. I had to buy extra window shades to cover up. In the winter, there's a cold draft coming in constantly. Also, the windows are see-through from both sides so you have very little privacy since the windows are floor-to-ceiling.

3. Parking. Like previous commenters, the parking lot is not well built. Two cars can't go through at the same time. Who designed this?

4. Packages are scattered everywhere in the 1st floor. They updated it so that they're somewhat organized, and I've never had a package go missing. I've had them be hard to find and searched for 20 minutes, but they're usually eventually found. I did see a homeless guy sleeping on the couch in the lobby once though.

5. Built-ins. The built-in cabinets are very cheap material, but normal for an apartment like this where the goal is to maximize profit. They would break sometimes. When I moved in, they were still fixing the built-ins that the previous tenant broke.

6. Price. For the price, I'd suggest getting a nicer apartment somewhere else. I had a good deal, but they raised the rate and it wasn't worth the price.

Your choice whether you want to move in, but just FYI - people are constantly leaving this place and moving...

Location is really nice. Apartment is nice. That's about it for positives.

I'm fairly certain most of my issues are due to living on the side of the building that faces East Washington Ave. Do not rent on that side of the building.

Elevators are constantly broken so you get to enjoy waiting 10+ minutes to ride the elevator.

Fire alarms at all hours of the evening, so you won't be able to sleep. They sometimes go for one to two hours. Never has there once actually been a fire. This tends to happen 2 to 4 times a month. Sometimes multiple times in one evening.

If you're planning to rent a unit on the side of the building that faces East Washington Ave, then you will get to listen to people drag racing in obnoxiously loud vehicles that sound like someone is rattling off gun fire in the streets from the hours of 8pm to 2 am every Thursday through Sunday. Additionally the establishment across the street plays music very loud outdoors from 10pm to 2am from Thursday through Saturday. It is loud enough that you will be able to feel the music reverberate through your furniture. It eases up in the winter but it still happens. Don't let staff lie to you that you won't be able to hear the cars or music. The cars are glaringly loud and the music is tiresome. Don't be surprised to find a corpse laying in the road either. Someone dies on the road outside the building once every couple months at least.

Packages and belongings are stolen fairly frequently from the lobby or parking garages. Also good luck finding your package as they seem to just be tossed anywhere in the lobby.

The parking garage is incredibly narrow where two vehicles cannot go through the corners at the same time.

The units must share a ventaltion system because my apartment constantly smells like marijuana and I don't partake. Everyday I get home from work it smells like someone has been ripping bong in my apartment the entire day I was out. I don't have anything against weed, I would just prefer my apartment didn't smell like dabs and bong smoke.

Property management is also highly unresponsive. Phones are rarely picked up, voicemails and emails are...