The Mark Tucson — Local services in Tucson

I started living here Aug. 2022 & will live here until summer of 2024 (I don’t know exactly when I will move out after I graduate).

When it comes to choosing any off-campus housing, there are many things to consider. SAFETY IS #1. You have to realize that The Mark is on E. Broadway - very close to downtown. While that might be appealing because of restaurants/bars/other extracurricular activities, I have felt unsafe at times. One evening this year, a homeless man started following my boyfriend and me after we went on a date. TO CLARIFY: this is, of course, NOT The Mark’s fault. It’s just important to think about the location of this apartment.

Security … oof. I’m just thankful that we can lock the front door in our apartment and our own bedroom doors. Locks have been destroyed through the semesters (locks to get from the garage into the building), and the chain garage doors have been damaged many times. Not all of The Mark’s residents are bad, but obviously the people that destroy its property are. When things do get broken, they take FOREVER to get fixed (ordering parts, etc).

The hallways outside of our apartment doors are filthy. I live in the first floor of building 2, and there were MANY days where the smell of the trash was so overpowering.

Also random - people like to destroy/steal the exit signs inside of the buildings ??? I guess it makes for a cool wall deco or something 🤷‍♀️

The pool has been closed several times due to people violating pool rules and destroying pool equipment … I AM A GRAD STUDENT! Seriously - I feel like I’m living with middle schoolers🤦🏼‍♀️ I understand why management shuts down the pool then! It ruins things for everyone else.

Price wise … it just depends what your budget is. Again, being so close to not only downtown but also to campus is nice. I personally feel like I pay for a lot considering I live in a 4 bed/4bath. Perspective 🤷‍♀️

Now for the GOOD that I have experienced.

I love that I have my own room and bathroom. The kitchen area is nice, and the size of it is good. I love that we have in-unit laundry. The Mark, so far, has served its intended purpose in my life.

The RoomSync situation that The Mark used worked pretty dang well. I was happy with my roommate situation. People were, for the most part, clean and quite and respectful. We are all students, you know? We study and work a lot.

I hope this helps anyone who is thinking about signing...

DO NOT LIVE HERE. The mark is probably the worst place for u of a students to live. I lived here because I thought it was cheaper since it is farther away than most of the other student housing. I was wrong. The management is awful, run by students who know nothing and don’t care. The manager is also never here. My roommate had to walk into the back of the leasing office just to find someone to help her. The security here is also non existent. I have never seen a single security guard during my entire time living here. The security cameras also don’t work since half of the building flooded broke all of the cameras. Also most of the doors to hallways and the outside don’t actually lock, and I’ve seen homeless people riding bikes though the parking garage before. The hallways, stairwells, and parking garage are so foul and never get cleaned (there’s rotting food in the stairwell that’s been here all year). We haven’t had a working kitchen sink for pretty much the whole school year and it backs up randomly and makes our living room smell like sewage. My roommates and I are also pretty sure our apartment has black mold because our sinks, toilets, and showers grow mold and there’s also darkish stains that look like mold under the paint. I also have an air filter that never says the air quality is never good despite my roommates and I doing nothing to make it bad. Don’t even get me started on how they assign apartments because my roommates and I all signed early and we are in a corner on the second floor with a view of a concrete wall while other people have floor to ceiling windows or at least a little view even though they signed at the last minute and pay the same amount :). This is not even half the problems we’ve had. Also be aware that’s you’ll have about $200 dollars a month in additional hidden fees, including stuff like paying a large fee to simple bills to use their service even though the mark requires it. Or like paying $50 if your smoke alarm goes off. I’d recommend living literally anywhere else. The apartments on university somehow have better living conditions and management than the mark (which says a lot) for basically the same price or there’s lots of houses if you’re already planning to...

Just Don’t ! When I first moved in, I was welcomed by an unclean apartment including the common areas. The microwave, floors, countertops, and fridge were all dirty, with brown sludge in the back of the fridge. The unit itself was in poor condition: the ceiling fan was loose (which I later woke up to hanging by wires above my head), the shower drain was clogged, and several light bulbs were missing. Maintenance was unreliable and often showed up unannounced, sometimes weeks after I submitted a request. One of the worst experiences involved the ceiling fan. While I was at work, maintenance came to fix it without notifying me. I returned home at 8 PM to find dirt and thick fan dust on my bed, shoe prints on my sheets, and a large black stain in the middle of the carpet. I was never informed they were coming, that they had entered, or that they left such a mess. I had no choice but to sleep on backup sheets, as my bedding had been left on the floor and was too dirty to use. The next morning, I went to speak with the building manager, who was dismissive and told me I would need to take my bedding to the cleaners, pay for the service myself, and then be reimbursed. As a full-time student with a job and other responsibilities, I didn’t feel this was a fair solution for something that wasn’t my fault. To make matters worse, the roommate assignment process was extremely disorganized. I was initially sent a list of assigned roommates and had already been in contact with them. Later, I received another email informing me that my roommates had changed to men despite me and my current roommate being female and clearly expressing that we were not comfortable living with male roommates. When I brought this up, I was told that “nothing is final” and that I didn’t understand the process. If the assignments aren’t final, then why send out contact information and roommate details in the first place? Overall, living here was a constant headache. Between the uncleanliness, poor communication, unreliable maintenance, and disorganized management, I would not recommend this...