New Manchester Flats 4

It’s been a year since I’ve written my first review and I wanted to update it. This apartment is still in a bad location and yes i can smell my neighbors cigarettes… But I can’t express how awesome the new management is for new Manchester. They try to get neighbors involved by giving a cupcake on your birthday, having pizza parties and raffles, and their Maintenance team is always responsive and friendly! Have a problem with your washing machine? They will be there within a day or two! Now that is rare! I see a ton of lofts coming up in this area and it makes me truly happy to see this area progressing! I also love they are now more strict on our facilities as well. very pleased!

The apartments themselves are nice, very dog friendly and clean, but there are way too many cons, let’s start with the level of disrespect the management has for their tenants, it’s appalling.
*Hosting fundraisers on the grounds with no warning to the tenants and being told we are not allowed to use the amenities that we pay for.
*You pay for parking, yet they pay a towing company to prowl the parking lot each night and ask them to tow cars that haven’t left their spot for a few days. Seriously.
Some more cons:
*Full of loud frat kids
*Too close to the sewage treatment plant, it smells terrible here if it’s at all windy.
*There’s also a man who lives here who recently walked around very very drunk late at night with a loaded gun knocking on doors and trying to start fights. He was arrested, but released the next day and is not going to be evicted.
Way too much drama in this place. If you want to feel safe in your own home, look elsewhere.

The buildings are architecturally beautiful, and you get a lot for the money. The grounds are clean, there’s lots of parking, and the staff and management are incredibly nice and accommodating.
On the flip side, I get the impression that lots of the folks living here are coming straight from dorms. There’s noise all the time, and it’s so widespread that it’s difficult to know just where or who you would be reporting if you called management. The developer, their marketing and the way they carry themselves and the prices they charge say one thing about the kind of renters they’re looking for; for the most part, the people I’ve seen are the polar opposite of the type that might want to live in hip lofts.
Also? Our neighbors are loud as they can be, and smoke pot constantly. The walls are thin, and the ceilings are vintage pine timbers with ample gaps; the smoke pours in at all hours, and worst of all it pours into the room of our three year old. You keep it classy, neighbors.
So, we love the space and I would happily rent another Fountainhead property. I like what they’re trying to do by reclaiming old properties and saving them from demolition. But the neighbors I’ve met (or rather, that I’ve been glared at in a surly fashion as they walk their pit bulls) don’t exactly give me the warm fuzzies. I’ve encountered a few friendly folks, and had a few doors held open when we were moving. But if you’re looking for a new social group, you might want to try elsewhere. Unless you sell pot. Then my neighbors would love to talk to you.
== Update 10 – 2012 ==
A few words about building condition: I’ve seen a few comments here about leaky windows and other issues. Well, ours don’t leak but they are incredibly drafty. I’m also 90% certain that the beautiful exposed beams in the bedrooms are infested with carpenter ants; we hear them up there chomping away all night long. We mentioned it on an unrelated maintenance visit, and the response was basically, «um, yeeeeeah.»
== Update 12 – 2012 ==
One more important thing about living in Manchester: it’s not only a food desert, but it’s tough to find anyone who will even *bring* food to you when you live here. By our count, there are two Chinese places and one pizza place that aren’t afraid to come out here. This isn’t really a dig against the developers (although they are selling this as an «up and coming» neighborhood) but it is something to be aware of that isn’t necessarily obvious when you first come to see an apartment.
== Update 1 – 2013 ==
Final update. I want to say how nice Fountainhead Realty – who manages New Manchester Flats – is. We told them – after calling the police twice on our neighbors and having them bang on the walls and curse us, and after enduring weeks and weeks of drug use next door – that they would be moving us to a different apartment. And they did, without any real fanfare at all. Our new place in Shockoe is very nice (not without little issues of its own, but much quieter and no one expects us to play lookout for them while they use drugs up and down every hallway). So even though Fountainhead doesn’t seem interested in getting rid of tenants who are not only breaking their lease but breaking the law, they will help you move to another place where you can be comfortable and happy. For that we’re grateful.

Well, looks like I have to write a review update. I was going to let the poor reviews go, everyone has a different opinion of everything, but then I saw Erin T impugned my Unilocal honor. Yes, that sounds awfully Samurai of me, but if you throw one of my reviews into doubt by saying it was paid for, you throw all of my reviews into doubt and I don’t appreciate it.
First off, Erin, you live in the old building, which has a different address and a different name. You could have started an entirely new Unilocal entry and it would have shown up as just one star. Alyssa, I haven’t met you yet, so I don’t know where you live. Erin, I see why you’re bitter though, I’d be bitter too if the rumors are true and management has told you that you have to get your deck chairs out of the common walkway or face eviction. I can’t believe you didn’t insist on getting a copy of your lease and tenant agreement when you signed them. You can borrow mine if you like.
Erin, you also do not «know for a fact» anything about me other than what I’ve shared in our brief conversations together. Actually though, I did get a break on my rent. When I was getting ready to move in August I looked on Craigslist for apartments with rent specials, since I didn’t have money for the usual first/​last/​deposit deal at the time. Manchester was offering a half deposit, free first month deal. When we went to sign the lease paper they decided to throw in free parking at the last minute. A good thing, too, I would have been pissed if I’d paid for secure parking that isn’t really secure.
So to sum, Erin, before i get on to other, more general concerns. I saved about 1,900 $ with the rent special. Do you really think that a company that can’t finish a lousy parking lot for over 8 months or fix a parking lot gate so that it works for more than a day at a time would pay nearly two grand for a lousy Unilocal review? I don’t.
Now, on to more general concerns. When I moved in they told me that as long as my dog wasn’t dog aggressive, she was free to run around off-​leash within the gates of the compound. That’s one of the major reasons I moved in here. Several months later a flyer was circulated saying that since there have been complaints of «vicious dogs running free» (I haven’t seen any) we all had to walk our dogs on leash again. I’m *still* mad about that and I can see how many other people would be mad enough to ignore the rule altogether.
Keeping in mind that I’m in the new building, I’ve never heard sounds or smelled smells from the apartments surrounding me. There’s definitely someone in the old building who smokes a hell of a lot of weed, that I smell in the hallways, but otherwise, nothing. I wouldn’t suggest that anyone other than a couple share an apartment together. My husband and I have learned that you can hear anything the other person does in another room. No, not the bathrooms, but I can hear him talk on the phone, etc. Perhaps we are simply loud people, but I would doubt that.
As far as hearing trains, yep, there’s a track somewhere fairly nearby but seriously, is there somewhere in Richmond where you *can’t* hear trains? I’ve lived in the Fan, the Museum District, Randolph and Jackson Ward and I heard trains in all of them.
I actually wish that the complex was child-​free. I didn’t think to ask when I moved in, I just assumed that one couldn’t raise kids in a loft-​style studio. However, there are three kids who run around outside during the summer. I really don’t like kids.
After reading the two poor reviews I started to wonder if the windows actually do leak. The only time my windows leaked was on the last day of the hurricane when the water was driving in sideways. We put two towels down and everything was fine. The very next day there was a guy on a ladder caulking the outside of the windows.
I asked around about the windows. Here’s some advice for potential renters, don’t get an outside door. One of my friends said, «Oh yeah, that hurricane? Leaked like a sieve. Had to move all our furniture. It sucked. We asked to move after that, but the don’t have any more studios free.» Erin T, by the way, has an outside door.
Other advice for potential renters. Don’t believe management if they tell you there’s a café going in and the parking lot next to the new building will be done «next month». We moved in going, «Ok, so if that’s all propaganda, do we like it enough as-​is to move in?» so we moved in. Months later, none of it is done and though we can see the parking lot making strides toward being done it’s like they only work on it one day of the week. It’s weird, they were working on it on Thanksgiving, but they didn’t even touch it the entire week before.
It’s definitely disappointing to me that there’s not a lot around here to do but that’s obvious the second you get into the neighborhood.

It’s new, clean, functional and a little friendly. Dogs are welcome and it seems like everyone has one or two (a good thing in my book. We’re right off the on-​ramp for I-​95, so it’s convenient if you want to go north or south. But we’re in the middle of an industrial wasteland, there is very little grass/​trees/​park and nowhere to walk to.