Arrive 800 Penn Executive 1br 1 Ba

The building is old, and for what it offers, the high rent doesn't make sense. If this is how things are going to be, they should lower the rent and stop calling it "luxury," which feels like a dumb joke. The water issues pushed me to finally write this. They asked residents to stop posting negative reviews about the shutoffs, but we often get less than enough notice, and the water seems to have problems frequently. A previous landlady told me water trouble is one of the worst things a building can have. Our wall started leaking for reasons nobody could identify; a repair person couldn't find the cause, so I suppose it could happen again at any time. Showers take forever to heat up, then the temperature is hard to control. The building can run heat or AC, but not both, so on a warm winter day you roast. In summer the building-wide AC is too weak, and our place stayed above 72 no matter how we tried to seal it. The ground floor tends to smell like trash, especially in summer. When we first moved in, the poor paint job and unfinished repairs shocked us enough that we almost broke the lease. The walls look awful, with thick, bubbling gray paint that still smells seven months later. A lot of them are cement, though, so there's not much neighbor noise. The popcorn ceilings are ugly too, and they painted over dust hanging down, leaving threads of painted dust everywhere. The floors aren't well maintained. There's often trash and dog hair around, the laundry room floors are dirty, and the elevators need a deep clean and the graffiti buffed out. Dog poop has been left in the garage for months. Residents don't seem to respect the place, and staff could do more cleaning. The property managers do seem to care and are responsive and helpful when they can be. They even fixed one of the car chargers so it works with my electric vehicle. But at move-in we asked them to fix the noisy AC and add our phone numbers to the call box, and they said both were impossible. We fixed the AC ourselves, which was a quick, minor thing, and they're finally adding our numbers to the call box.

I've lived here almost a year and a half, and I strongly recommend against this place. My partner and I were shocked to hear other people had good experiences, because the problems feel close to making the building uninhabitable. Compared with other places we've lived, it feels more like section 8 in a lower-income area than anything luxurious. We're moving out in two months. They have a lot to fix before they should be renting units at these prices. The management team is phenomenal, and maintenance responds quickly. Getting the actual repairs done is another story, and the misinformation is constant. The building has serious pipe problems, with leaks from pipes above ceilings in several apartments, mine included. It took two or three months to get a response about mine. We were given several different explanations for the same problem to placate us, until a hole larger than a foot opened in our ceiling. Our hallway has had severe leaking since before 08/22. It used to be like a waterfall bursting through the ceiling after being ignored for months, and now the walls are splitting from all the water getting inside. The water gets shut off about every two weeks, and for a while it seemed to happen at least weekly, with less than 24 hours' notice. The garage level tells you a lot about the building's quality. The floors are constantly soaked, it often smells like mold, and the walls are falling apart from water that seems to be coming from above. The underground parking is safe, but water leaks leave standing puddles everywhere during rain and winter. Neighbors have told us they share these concerns. We've also heard that many thermostats don't work and apparently can't be fixed. Our own AC has gone out, and the wait for help was long.

The latest problem was sewage spilling from our ceiling. On October 4, my wife got up for work and found the toilet seat and floor wet. When I looked, urine and toilet water were all over the toilet and floor, with sewage pooled in a bubble in the ceiling and dripping down. My wife had sat in it. As of October 9, we still couldn't use our bathroom, though the leasing office was letting us use a model unit to bathe and use the toilet. We asked for the bathroom to be cleaned and disinfected after repairs and wanted to move to a same-size unit at no cost. The office offered a $200 rent credit. When I said we wanted to move, they told us a transfer would cost $300, then said we could either waive that fee and move or stay and keep the $200 credit. I find that ultimatum insulting. We don't want to move, but we also don't want to stay in a place with repeated leaks, sewage, and mold. If either of us gets sick or an infection, Arrive 800 Penn will have much bigger problems. I also asked to schedule a visit to inspect another unit, and nobody has replied. My wife and I have lived at 800 Penn since August 2023. The bathroom ceiling first broke open and leaked used bath water in April 2024. We submitted a work order, and after several days they said it was fixed. About a week later water pooled and leaked again. Maintenance returned to repair the upstairs neighbor's tub and our ceiling, but a week after that water poured out of the bathroom ceiling fan. That was three incidents in two weeks. After a third repair, the ceiling started leaking again on May 8. This was someone's dirty bath water. A couple of months passed after that repair, then the ceiling began leaking again and black mold started forming where the leaks kept recurring. Before leaving on our two-week honeymoon, we submitted another maintenance request for the ceiling and a few other apartment issues. When we got back, nothing had been done about the ceiling or mold. The leasing office said the plumber had suddenly got COVID, but they hadn't called another plumber and had left it all to fester. Eventually a plumber came and replaced the ceiling drywall again. Needless to say, we're frustrated.

The laundry is a recurring headache. Half the time the washer leaves soap in the clothes, or the dryer doesn't dry them at all. The water also gets shut off fairly often, and the lighting in the units is terribly placed. The maintenance crew is the best I've dealt with across all the apartments I've lived in, and I'd give them five stars. Whenever I submit a request, someone responds almost immediately. Nick Towe has handled every work order I've put in, and he's always professional, efficient, and a pleasure to work with.