Chestnut Square — Local services in Philadelphia

My lease at Chestnut Square is coming to an end and I feel I have a duty to my community to leave this review. If you are a Drexel freshman or the parent of a Drexel freshman, it's in your best interest to attempt to get out of the second-year housing agreement. I have heard similar stories from friends at UC and Summit - the problem is not the building management, it's ACC. For reference, I lived in the "townhouse" layout which cost $4800 monthly ($1200/person). Here are my main complaints:

I'll put this first in case you aren't going to read my entire review: Chestnut Square pays for five-star reviews. If you go ahead and sort by the highest reviews, you will notice they mention an employee's name. This is because a while back they were offering a small bonus to employees whose names were mentioned in a five-star review. This should really tell you all you need to know about how scummy this company is.

A panel on our ceiling was leaking for an entire month. I will attach a picture. I put in a NUMBER of maintenance requests, yet the issue was never actually resolved. This made the air uncomfortably humid and created a perpetual puddle on the ground. It went away eventually on its own, kind of randomly.

Our upstairs A/C did not work for most of the summer, and it’s been a really hot summer. Again, we put in a number of maintenance requests and nothing was fixed. In a $4800/month apartment, an issue like this should be quickly resolved. Sort of related, there is no A/C in the hallways. This doesn't bother me much but goes to show how cheap they are.

They have recently installed "flow limiters" on our sinks. That is exactly what it sounds like, it reduces the amount of water that flows from the sink. They claimed environmental reasons, but I think they did it to reduce their own water bill since one of the only upsides of ACC buildings is that utilities are included in rent. The resulting water flow is extremely weak.

Our dryer (included w/ townhouse) was broken for two weeks. It took us two maintenance requests to get this fixed. I have also heard from friends that the communal laundry machines and dryers (which you have to PAY TO USE) are frequently out of order or only half working, i.e., the dryers will take two (paid) cycles to dry your clothes.

Our couch is composed of several pieces of mismatched sizes. I'll include a picture. They flat-out said "no" when we asked for pieces of a consistent size. Then, right at the end of our lease, we received an email stating that the couch was going to be replaced for the next residents. This shows how little they care about retaining residents. They have a constant stream of demand from freshmen and their families who don't know any better than to go along with the second-year housing contract.

The wifi is absurdly bad. I won't even go on about this myself, just google "Pavlov Media," which is the service they provide, and read the reviews. That should speak for itself.

It’s rare to see all three elevators working at once - they break a LOT. Several times this year we have had one functional elevator for an 18-floor building. It was also reported a couple of months ago that someone was stuck in the elevator for half an hour.

This is a pretty specific one, but if you are a runner, be warned - at most, 50% of the treadmills are working at any given time. At one point there was genuinely a SINGULAR treadmill working. There are at least eight down there.

The fire alarm goes off A LOT and at odd hours of the night. It's to the point where barely anyone evacuates anymore, which is a safety hazard. It's like the boy who cried wolf.

In sum, it’s barely a step up from a dorm. Their profits must be unimaginably high considering how much they charge for rent and how little they are willing the spend on basic maintenance. Save your money and sanity and try to live somewhere else for your...

In the two months I have lived here, my roommates and I have had a terrible experience with Chestnut's facilities and office team. Amenities promised in our leases are broken and/or completely dysfunctional, office staff has been unaccommodating to our maintenance requests, and we have had a rodent infestation in our apartment (on the 14th floor) for over a month that Chestnut has virtually refused to help us with. Only after threatening legal action did they bring us a mere 2 mouse traps to put in our kitchen as an attempt to remedy our large-scale mouse infestation. Mice continue to spread throughout our apartment and droppings are found in our kitchen, inside of our stove, and on sponges and appliances we use to clean and cook with. This is a completely unsafe environment to be living in, and it is completely unacceptable considering the nearly $5,000 Chestnut collects from my roommates and I monthly to live here. In addition to this we have also experienced issues with the following:

Elevators are constantly broken causing constant lines in the lobby that have caused many to be late to classes and jobs. On multiple instances I have waited upwards of 8 minutes for an elevator.

"On-site laundry facilities" were broken upon move in and currently only 6 barely functioning washers and dryers are available and expected to accommodate everyone in the building

Furniture included with our apartment looks as though it was salvaged from a dumpster. Our couch is visibly flaking off and falling apart rendering it virtually unusable. Two of our four dining chairs have literally split in half just from being sat on and we have had to personally swap them out.

Lighting in all of our living spaces is extremely dim and flashlights must be used to provide proper visibility when cooking and cleaning

Chestnut staff has denied many service requests from our unit requesting help with the rodent infestation and fixing broken amenities. Recently, the office has also made the decision to completely close the office every Sunday without explanation, meaning that we will not have access to staff, packages, or maintenance if we have an emergency.

AVOID LIVING HERE at all costs, what Chestnut is advertising is not at all what you will receive and the costs of living here are not reflected in our living spaces or amenities. If it was possible to give Chestnut 0 stars I absolutely would. While tenants at Chestnut suffer, Chestnut's parent company American Campus Communities continues to participate in Drexel University sponsorships and giveaways of money and prizes of high value, yet somehow cannot find the funding to fix the growing list of issues in our apartment complex. It is abundantly clear that they couldn't care less about their tenants and likely will not care about tenants unless legal action is pursued.

*pictures included: Mouse coming out of our stove, droppings found on our kitchen floor that fell out of our refrigerator, corner of our couch that is disintegrating when touched, some of the broken...

I would give 0 stars if I could. American Campus Communities and with it, Chestnut Square, is a predatory organization that preys on college students who are either too naive or too busy with school to fight back. The issues that I myself have experienced, as well as my roommates and friends who lived here as well are numerous. A few weeks after I moved in, we discovered we had a family of mice living in the wall in our bathroom as well as IN OUR STOVE. We dealt with this issue almost entirely on our own. We caught and disposed of 3 separate mice. The only help Chestnut gave us was to come by and attempt to spray foam on the gaps in the walls (all from shoddy construction). To be frank, this did not bother me all that much, as I knew things could be worse, and I was correct. Additionally, many items of the apartment were in disrepair when we moved in. The couch was flaking off on our skin whenever we sat on it, a commonality among every apartment in the building. The AC would frequently stop working, as well as the electricity in one of my roommates rooms. Despite this, Chestnut still proceeded to charge us 100s dollars extra each month for “utilities” with no explanation as to where they were getting this number. Additionally when I moved the couch, I discovered the walls were MOLDY. This same mold was present in my roommates room and HOSPITALIZED her. The “amenities” they claim to have were non existent. If you chose to make the trip all the way down to the basement, there was a high chance that OVER HALF of the laundry machines (which you need to pay for) would be out of order or smell like mildew. I am generally quite an understanding person, and not a lot bothers me. I was fine with these things, but then it came time to move out. My roommate and I were able to start moving into our new place in August prior to our Chestnut lease being up, so we chose to get most of our things out of there as soon as possible. Chestnut requires that you deep clean everything before you turn in your keys, or else they will charge you an exorbitant amount of money (despite the place being dirty and broken when we moved in). When my roommate and I returned to our rooms to clean and pick of the rest of her things, we were welcomed to the site of paint chips all over the floor, all of her things MISSING, and someone else’s stuff in my closet. While we were gone they had ILLEGALLY entered our apartment while we were still technically living there and STOLEN her items. They have yet to find them, and I highly doubt they will. The manager did her best to placate us, but it is completely ridiculous that this ever happened. You can’t check to see if a room is still occupied before you start the turnover process?? If you go to Drexel and need to fulfill your second year housing requirement, do your best to get out of it, or otherwise DO NOT LIVE HERE. They do not care about you or...