The Burlington

After living at The Burlington almost 5 years, as of this past spring I have moved out. I look back at the review I wrote, and at the time — most it was accurate.
However, as I lived there longer, the worse it all got. The community (aka fellow tenets) went downhill drastically. It was a fairly quiet place when we first moved in, but by the time we left we had experienced more than one neighbors midnight domestic disturbance (one below us, one next to us), kids running the hallways unattended, solicitors knocking at the door, the hallways cluttered with personal items and the buildings just generally being unkept, unclean and sometimes even stinky. I will never forget the morning I went to work and almost stepped in puke from one of the classier tenets in the stairwell, I will also never forget when it was still there when I came home from work despite both myself and my husband complaining to the front office.
Do not even get me started on the front office. In general, I have never met a more poorly run and rude operation in my life. They lost our rent check, didn’t tell us until the next month was due and then threatened legal action. When I confronted them with evidence of THEIR error, the woman was rude, unhelpful and treated me as if I were a criminal of some nature and making up stories. But it gets better, after that day they office asked me to «Let me husband deal with them from now on» stating that they did not want to deal with me anymore.
I would not recommend this building to anyone.

I moved into the Burlington Apartments September of 2014 with a good friend of mine. At first glance these apartments look very nice from the exterior of the grounds as well as the plaza area. Beginning the lease I was very excited to begin a new chapter of my life there. Not even a month into our lease we had somehow managed to get SEVERAL «noise complaints» from an unnamed entity. At first we assumed we were being too loud with our cronies during inappropriate times, so we tried our best to be thoughtful of our neighbors. Two months in we had to have a meeting with the Burlington Apt management because apparently our neighbors were not too happy with us. Realizing the seriousness of respecting the close proximity of our neighbors my roomie and I decided to truly dial down the noise coming from our apartment. The apartment has a awesome porch, since i work all day i want to come home and be able to step out for a smoke on my porch with my roommate, but coming home at 8pm i couldnt even use it unless i was virtually silent. 3^rd month in, my roommate and his 8 year old were playing video games while i was at work and apparently the two of them generated enough noise to the point where a neighbor called the cops on them at 8pm on a friday (not even quiet hours); I can assure you they were not being loud enough to justify calling the police. At the end of the day it has come to the point where i no longer have guests over in fear of getting more noise complaints which we are told eventually can/​would lead to eviction. Basically what I am getting at is the walls and the flooring of these apartments must be made of goddamn paper. We pay a decent amount of money for living in these «luxury» apartments. For being deemed a luxury apartment i am frankly disappointed. For a simple example, our windows dont close properly which caused the wind to howl as well as our screens not properly fitting. When i asked management to fix the screens of our windows all they did was put 3″ screws into them pretty much forcing them to fit… not really fixing the problem. I had a closet door literally just fall off the hinges (which has yet to be fixed) while showing off my «cool new apartment» to my parents. The paint on the wall of my bathroom looks awful, the hot showers cause the paint to bubble up and just look ugly. The overall maintenance of the apartment is very poor. There is often broken glass in the grass where i park my car along with the copious amounts of dog poop. The garbage units within the building are always over flowing and never taken care of. The front door of the building has no mechanism to close the door lightly so when people enter and leave the premises the door slams so seriously hard to the point where i can hear it anytime it closes. Thats one of those things that is an easy fix but the maintenance men either seem to just use other doors or dont deem it to be worth fixing. (its been a personal pet peeve of mine)
Although I will not be resigning the lease at the end of the month i will say there are a few positive aspects of this apartment. The location of the apartment is very nice being close to Roseville and all that area has to offer along with being close to i-​94, Hamline University, and the Como area. Secondly I really did love the inner plaza area with the grills and fire place; great for playing catch or kicking a soccer ball around.
At the end of the day I would NOT personally suggest this apartment to anyone. For amount of money you spend on a month to month basis, I can assure you can find a much better place to live.

I suppose it’s fitting that this is my 100^th review, because I lived at the Burlington for most of my now seven years of living in the Twin Cities (we have since purchased a house within the last year). I lived here until 2014, very recently.
A straightforward list of pros and cons is probably the easiest way to structure this.
Pros:
— It’s an excellent location, at least in terms of convenience. Right off the 3 bus line, and a quick 10 – 15 minute drive to the Minneapolis UMN campus (where I worked when I moved here for grad school in 2008).
— Most buildings have very nice gyms, party rooms, laundry facilities and other amenities.
— The grounds are kept beautifully, and there’s a nice pool.
— The maintenance staff here were always exceptional. Prompt, fixed our problems right away, very kind.
— I was able to get an excellent rate for our apartment, which I liked a lot, for the most part — the walk-​in closets are a huge plus. I miss my walk-​in closet.
Cons:
— In 2011, there was a MASSIVE fire at one of the buildings. It destroyed a large portion of the building, including several apartments, and the whole building had to be re-​done. More troubling than the fire itself was the way the management company chose to handle the situation. They were extremely cryptic and vague about the fire’s origins, even when I called and asked questions in person. In the end I had to read the St. Paul fire department report to learn that it was an electrical fire caused by faulty wiring that had NOT begun in an apartment, but in an attic space maintained by the Burlington. These buildings were built before the advent of our current fire codes, and this fire really scared me, obviously. I have children and did not feel comfortable with the management’s lack of responsibility/​transparency regarding this fire. I feel much safer in our current home.
— If you are anything less than a Certified Dog Fanatic (I am not), the dog culture here can grow wearying. They’re one of the few complexes that allow large dogs, which I didn’t realize at first. There’s a dog park, but few people use it – and many, many tenants let their dogs go off-​leash on the grounds, leading to more than a few incidents of dogs jumping on or chasing or nipping my children. Not cool. Also, there were many, many cases in my six years living here of dogs pooping inside the apartment buildings, in the halls, or in the sidewalks right outside the buildings. And in the spring, when the snow melts, the grounds are covered with dog poo. This is more an issue of lazy dog owners than the apartment’s fault, but it was a major irritation. Also, you better hope that you don’t live downstairs from a particularly large or noisy dog.
— There’s a lot of turnover among the front office staff. From the time I moved in to the time I moved out, there was near-​constant turnover. Several of the office staff were very kind and good at their jobs, but (and this is a BIG but) there were larger systemic communication problems that left us feeling unsatisfied. For example, here is an email we received in 2014:
«We have unfortunately run into a situation where we need your help. Recently there was a situation in one of our garages. We want to remind everyone who rents a garage space, that it is crucial we do not leave the remote visible. Please hide it in a compartment. Along with that, please do not leave anything valuable in your car. We have come across an instance where a person with potential unwanted activity will think there’s value in a vehicle if blankets are thrown about. They think you are covering up something. If your car looks empty, there wouldn’t be a reason to break in.»
So… an «unpleasant situation?» What kind of situation? What is happening? Are people being assaulted? Are we talking about break-​ins? Vandalism? This kind of communication was pretty typical. Cryptic and frustrating. This leads to the next point:
— Near-​constant car break-​ins. This comes down to the neighborhood. The complex is right next to Bandana Square, and unfortunately several times a year, every year, we suffered large rashes of car break-​ins.
— This is another big one — Energy Park, the energy company (NOT the Burlington) decides when to turn the heat and A/​C on for the whole complex. You cannot alternate between both at the same time. So, every year, there is usually 2 – 3 weeks where it is VERY VERY uncomfortably hot in the apartments (the large windows are beautiful, but they heat up the apartments fast — think 85+ degrees inside).
— During the Hmong Festival and the State Fair, parking is a SERIOUS challenge. I encouraged the staff to put up large, professional signs about tenants-​only parking, but they only posted cardboard signs that promptly blew down.
So, for my family, the cons far outweighed the pros. The fire was BY FAR the most alarming thing. We made many good memories here, but I’m very glad to be in our own home now.