Ravenel Apartments

I lived in Ravenel from 2014 – 16. The location of the apartment is great, but it makes the horrible management of the building only marginally more tolerable. Think very seriously before you consider renting here. My issues with Ravenel fall into two categories: management communication and maintenance.
Management Communication: Building management does not prioritize timely, complete, or accurate communication with renters. While staying at Ravenel, I emailed building management on a handful of occasions – certainly not excessive and only for serious issues. I never received a response to an email that I sent without following up. On the off chance that I received a response, it came when I ran into the building manager in the hallway. Even then, she would acknowledge my request and promise to follow up but never actually do so (unless I reminded her via email). She never followed up via email, which was irritating to me as I wanted to keep a record of interactions. Further, my roommate and I were never notified of rent increases. Rather, we were notified of rent increase via a «delinquent rent» notice after the increase was put into effect. For the second rent increase, my roommate and I were falsely informed that our rent was higher than it actually was. When checking out of Ravenel, we learned that we were significantly overpaying for our rent due to a miscommunication by management. We are still waiting to be reimbursed for the money that we paid. I got the impression that the building was severely understaffed. While I am sympathetic to overworked employees, I struggle to understand why my roommate and I had to coach management to complete very basic tasks (such as restore water to my apartment).
Maintenance: There is no direct way for tenants to contact maintenance. Rather, they have to log maintenance requests into an online system or call a number and log requests with someone who works for Van Metre (in a non-​maintenance related capacity). This causes several communication issues. I logged three maintenance requests during my time at Ravenel. On each occasion, I had to request that maintenance follow up as they often cut corners or created totally unworkable solutions (e.g.-new dishwasher installed but door will not close, new faucet installed but no water comes out). Requests for follow up sometimes went unanswered for a week at a time.