Hayden LIC Apartments by Rockrose — Local services in New York

My Honest Review of Hayden LIC Apartments (Former Resident, 2 Years)

I lived at Hayden for two years, and everything I write here is purely from my own experience. It’s a bit long, but hopefully useful if you’re considering a place in Long Island City.

The Good: Hayden is marketed as a luxury building, and you do get some solid amenities. The gym is small but convenient — perfect for a quick workout or light cardio in the morning. During my time there, the amenities were never overcrowded, which was a big plus.

Most of the front desk staff were genuinely great, especially the younger ones. Some even remembered me and my unit number, which made me feel really welcome. One guy in particular was always so positive — smiling every time he opened the door, just good energy. When I moved out, at the revolving door, I gave him a small gift and thanked him for “all the positivity all this time.” In a city like NYC, keeping that spirit day in and day out isn’t easy, and I truly appreciated it. If you’re somehow reading this — I meant it bro, wish you all the best.

Danny: Now, Danny. I’ve seen his name mentioned in other reviews, and yup, he wasn’t my favorite. I see one review bring up racism issue. To be clear: I wouldn’t say he’s racist — I’m Asian myself and never felt that vibe. But he did sometimes come off with a bit of a cold face, like he wasn’t too happy to interact. I had impressions of him especially since other frontend staff are always welcoming and chill. On top of that, I noticed he could be noticeably warmer and more upbeat with certain residents, especially women. I’m not the only one who felt this way — friends of mine also noticed it, and other reviews here. I'm glad I wasn’t imagining things.

And for anyone wondering why I’m calling out one name: it’s because almost every other front desk staff member I dealt with was genuinely good. If I just said “the front desk had issues,” it would unfairly lump all of them together, which isn’t right. So yes — for me it was about one person.

Kevin and the Rules: Then there’s Kevin, the manager. From my interactions, I found that he tends to protect his staff first rather than stand in the residents’ shoes. He’s also very strict about enforcing rules. I get it — rules are rules, and I understand why he wants to hold the line, even at times it crossed into suffocating. After all, this is supposed to be a home, not a military camp or a boarding school.

Hayden really has a lot of rules, and they enforce them pretty strictly. For example, you can’t leave anything in the hallway, even briefly. Once I came back from a ski trip and leaned my skis and helmet by my door while unpacking inside with the door open — and an older staff member, Juan, came over to say I couldn’t leave them there, though he “allowed” me three minutes. Another time I had a grocery delivery, just a pack of drinks left by my door for a bit, and it was thrown out. Even with food deliveries left downstairs, I once came down within a minute and Kevin reminded me sternly that he was “letting me go this time.” Over time, these small incidents made the place feel less like a home and more like a tightly controlled military base.

Overall: My time at Hayden was pretty good overall. Most of the front desk staff — especially the younger ones — were genuinely kind and made a positive impression on me.

I wouldn’t however recommend Hayden to friends. The building has 900+ units, it’s very rules-driven, and with NYC’s housing shortage, I don’t see much incentive for them to change/improve as per these feedbacks here. Even now, years later, I still see reviews mentioning the same issues, which tells me not much has improved.

So if you have options, I’d say look at other luxury apartments in Long Island City. There are plenty, at similar price points, and in my opinion the resident experience is likely better. For me, Hayden is 2.5 stars — and those stars go to the staff who truly made a difference during...

I've been living in LIC for 10 years now. I've lived in QLIC, Jackson Park 3, Jackson Park 2, and for the past 5 of those 10 years: Hayden LIC.

It's really easy to look at surface level things like design, square footage of units, amenities, and make an assumption about what buildings SEEM best. However, I am writing today to make it clear: when you are selecting a place to live, the single most important factor is the STAFF and Building Management.

I believe the Rockrose management team truly cares about their residents. Senior building management constantly spends time around the building, taking pulse checks with the residents, asking how we are doing and if there are any improvements they can make to the building or with general living conditions. One time, I was moving a large box and the resident manager actually offered to personally drive me to my storage unit with the box... I was floored. This is not normal behavior in rental buildings.

I bring up management, because at other buildings I constantly heard horror stories about other building management being completely absent or actively attempting financial harm on their residents (withholding rent deposits without evidence of wrongdoing, predatory behavior relating to renewals, pushing off elevator maintenance after safety complaints were made, etc.).

The staff here are on another level. Every single front desk and door staff knows the residents by name and also know exactly which unit they belong to. In all of my years living in doormen buildings, I have never experienced as much cheer and upbeat attitudes as I have here at Hayden. You can also tell this is a great building because the staff turnover is extremely low. I would guess that in the five years we've lived here, we have only really had turnover of give or take 3-4 front desk guys (one of them moved into the maintenance team!) while the total number of doormen is something like 10-12 (less than 25% over 5 years is nutty).

I noticed there are a lot of negative reviews lately about some of the doormen, and I whole-heartedly DISAGREE with the things they've said. I would hazard to guess they are very new residents (and likely new to NYC), or possibly not even residents at all. A lot of these "new risidents" clearly do not read their rental agreements, because I too frequently encounter these kinds of "new residents" that violate building rules, and when it is pointed out that they are technically in breach of their contract, they go scorched-earth and freak out and jump straight to "racism" (sorry buddy, this is NYC, one of the most diverse places in the country, that doesn't work like you think it does). That is probably why they are here calling staff out by name, because they actually have a view that is akin to a sort of caste system, where an employee at a building is lower class than them, and shouldn't have the right to let them know they are breaking the rules... thus, naturally, they want to strike back and attempt to get that person fired. I think this approach is actually pretty evil. If you genuinely had an issue with building staff, you wouldn't attempt to economically harm the business itself, you would go to management FIRST.

The staff at Hayden are some of the kindest building staff I have ever had the pleasure to meet, and the experience here absolutely makes me feel as though I am living in a luxury building. If you are considering LIC and want to live in a luxury building, Hayden is truly the place to be (it is evident because available units are very hard...

My husband and I lived in Hayden in 2017 as one of their first tenants. I’ve decided to write a review only now after having lived in 4 other luxury buildings in Long Island City. I will honestly say that no building is perfect, but I think Hayden is one of the best apartment buildings in the LIC neighborhood.

Pros: We never had major issues inside our apartment. The building staff and front desk are the best! You always feel great coming home with people greeting you with a smile every time. They were all extremely professional. We did not hear noise from our neighbors. If they were ever yelling, it was muffled and you can barely hear them. Trust me, Ive lived in an apartment where you can TRULY hear your neighbors from paper thin walls and Hayden is not one of those buildings. My other neighbor always had people over and I never heard them. Only when they were passing in the hallway which is normal. Its a very clean building. They have one of the best amenities in the neighborhood and have a lot of spaces to lounge and relax, do work, or hangout with a friend. The gym is really nice and a good size for the building Their laundry room is nice, big and always clean (though every apartment has its own laundry, I used the one in the laundry room for my comforters) The interior construction and finishes of the apartments are well made, perfectly painted and no scratches anywhere. We moved to another Rockrose building after Hayden and it was not the same quality.

Cons: I don’t really have bad things to say about this building. There were only two things that stood out to me, though I did not think it was that bad. There was one time when my husband and I had friends over and we bought grocery to grill food on the rooftop. We put them in the fridge briefly while we prepared the grill and when we came back, someone had stolen everything. Our beers, meat and snacks were all gone. We complained to the building manager at the time and he rudely told us that there’s nothing he can do about that and it was not his problem. We worried that time that if we had any other issues, that he may not be reliable. Thankfully, we didn’t have any other issues. The heater wasn’t working properly in the winter BUT we never officially put a complaint about it since it did not bother us much but I thought of putting it here incase someone would be bothered by it, because I would want to know as much as I could before moving into a building.

We left Hayden because a new construction was going to start when our lease was over and it was going to be right in front of our apartment. We were worried of living a whole year full of noise and because our view and sunlight was definitely going to be obstructed. But after experiencing WAY worse problems in other luxury buildings, this felt so minor. If there’s one thing I can tell you about living in New York, is that if you’ve found a GREAT apartment, DO NOT LEAVE. There’s a risk of having worse problems in...