Arc At Old Colony

Everything is put together after three months living here. Here is the general experience as of 11/​30/​2015.
1. This building is not a 100% student apartment since there are approximately 60% of units occupied with students (long-​term lease) and the rest are contracted to be used as hotel rooms (if you search Ginosi Aparments, you will find Arc at Old Colony). Because of many apartments in several floors are occupied by short-​term stay guests (visitors), there are always people with luggage in the lobby and the turnover rate of short-​term stays is quite high. On Arc’s website, it says «…the Old Colony Building has been remodeled as a new and innovative residential community for students» which is not true apparently. I can’t comment on this part since people hold different opinions about it so I’m just stating what you will need to expect if you decide to live here in the future.
2. As a student apartment, there is no book shelf in most of rooms, unless your room was used to be an office and there would be a wall shelf. The table is apparently not big enough to hold all of your stuff. The lighting in the room is terrible if you want to do homework in the room since there is one lamp in each room (no over-​head light). So bring a table lamp.
3. Expect to hear the train in most of the rooms in this building’s north, west and east side (no matter which floor you are living in). If you are used to the noise, good for you but if you are not, «you will get used to it» which was told by the leasing office.
4. Can we get blinds in the living room? Windows in the living room are amazingly beautiful and huge. However, in the winter, the heat needs to be kept on for a quite good amount of time to prevent the indoor temperature to drop through the window glass (it’s physics, I don’t know how that works). Blinds will definitely help since they do help to preserve the temperature in bedrooms. Also if you stand on the train platform, you can see inside the apartments on the 3^rd floor so install some blinds and protect the privacy of your tenants.
5. There are events hosted every month for the residents (many of them provide food and refreshments), which I haven’t seen any other student apartment done it before, and it’s definitely a great feature of this apartment.
6. When elevators are broken, they are fixed within a few days and this is a great improvement since it opened in August.
7. I don’t know if tenants can do it but the rooftop was closed for PRIVATE parties for several times. How does that work? Can tenants host their own parties up there as well?
Overall, the living «experience» is good and definitely better than three months ago. However, there are still a lot of simple improvement for the management to think about, such as the shelf and blinds.