i went looking at this place and it looks pretty nice, the rooms are literally 2x the size of my northgate lakes rooms, and the overall apartment is furnished much nicer. its also $90 extra per month over what i'm paying now . walk in closet, deadbolt doors, bigger rooms, gated parking lot, doorside trash pickup, individual baths, it seems really nice, plus its literally 100 yards from where i work.

anyone ever lived there? i think its been brought up once or twice before i just don't remember what context it was in.

i'd really like to just rent a house with some people, but my lease doesn't end till august 15 so no one knows 8 months in advance

 

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sorry I lived there the first year it was open as College suites at Science drive. They went out of business they had horrid horrid horrid management.


Problems with the place when I lived there that are not management living.

Buildings are crap.... My buyilding used to "shudder" all the time... When it was 30* outside, I would have full heat on and the apartment would still be 50*, in the summer, we would go $25 a person, yes thats $100 over our electricity cap, every month over the summer.

1st floor of building 8 (across form the pool on opposite side of the Lake) My friedns and neighbors had their polumbing back up 3-4 times flooding there entire apartments in 3- 4 in. of pure sh|t water.

When I lieved there had it had 25 visisitor spots for all 16 buildings, and very strict towing.

Cestpool of a lake, walls are paper thin, I honestly think I could punch thorugh the wall from the inside all the way through to the outside.

I went to a party and found out a whole building got fried, literally every electronic device in the building got fried, from ceiling fans to TVS and computers.

The Internet makes northgate really look like high speed internet, I used to log on to NetZero for an online class because their internet was waaaaaaaay to crappy. Only time it ever worked nice was 8 am, before on of my classes hten it was roughly 40k a second. But on average I used to get less then 1k/sec downloads, woudl logg off, and dial up on NetZero and download at 4k/sec.


Overall, of all the apartments I have seen Whatever it is on Science drive has poor build quality. and never expect the gates to be working.

Jefferson Commons, Kinights Court, knights crossing and definetely Northgate have much better buildings.

The year I lived there there was a less 15% renewal rate for the next year.

Sorry for the rant, but I go to the otehr palces first, I have heard they cleaned up the management, but the buildings are jsut crap, I honestly believe one day I woudl come home and see that my building jsut collapased.

Bigger Closests, bigger rooms seem nice but also notice that there are only 4 drawers in the entire apartment, the 4 in the kitchen, none in your bathroom, none in your furniture, non in your closest.

not a big deal but kinda like the no ceiling fan at northgate, (btw I jsut took down there light fixture and installed a ceiling fan )

Honestly looking around norhtgate is the best... you cn get soem better ammenities liek a bigger room, walk in closest and dead bolt door(which I miss) but at roughly $100 more, and there are many many downfalls to it.

I would consider jefferson Commons, if you are looking fo9r a place, my girlfriend lived there 2 years no big problems jsut impossible ot get maintenance out, only reson she moved was becasue she had a cat hidden there for 1.5 years, and was worried about getting the $1000 fine, so she moved ot River Park.

IM me I can tell you what I can about it if you have questions.


Ohh yeah honestly I know some poepl that live in the teenie little place across the street and say its awesom, they are like townhouses, and most important I think they have a garage.

 

what i don't like about northgate is that the rooms are tiny, the internet sucks, the doors are INCREDIBLY easy to break into, all of the walls are paper thin, the utilities are decent (washer, dryer, kitchen, etc). when we moved in there was so much broken stuff, and the fake tile floors in our bathrooms and kitches are in horrible shape. on our building we have an emergency exit sign hanging on by a single bolt, burns from all sorts of smoked products both legal and not, and plastic bags and crap that has been in our dead tree out back for the past 2 months. it looks trashy

if someone is whispering out in the hallway out in front of my room door i can hear every word they say laying on my bed on the other side of my room, which isn't very far being a small room.

if someone slams the front door my window on the other side of the apartment shakes violently

science drive looks like its owned by American Campus now, who also baught the village at alafaya club. i looked at alafaya club yesturday and they are a clone of science drive except they're 10 bucks cheaper but don't include internet. they even have the exact same room layout, you can put the brochures on top of eachother and they match

i liked their deadbolt doors, a feature i really wish i had here at northgate as anyone with a credit card can shove it between the door frame and open it. they also seemed to have much more solid doors, not the hollow ones we have. i knocked on the walls and it didn't seem much worse than northgate, but still paper thin . i think most of the walls in the apartments around here are that thin.

actually i havn't chcked out those new apartments up more north on alafaya on the left. might do that tomarrow during lunch. also probably a good idea once i figure out the final few apartments i like to check out the actual units and not their demo one thats of course perfectly preserved. i'll get a friend to knock on a wall and we'll see how loud it is on the other side . i'll be sure to check out the stuff you mentioned, cabnet space, etc etc.

what i really am looking for though is a bigger space and thicker walls. my room is constantly cluttered here at northgate cause i have no place to put things. the one shelf in the closet is stuffed all the way up to the roof, and the drawers on their cheap-o dresser are falling though the bottom. a friend and i walked into the rooms at some of these around here and we were amazed how big they were. i think whats happened is last year at about this time i just wasn't well informed, had no clue what to look for. now i'm a much better informed consumer and i'm armed with stuff i want and don't want, and much of this is stuff i didn't know i wanted this time last year.

wish i didn't have to do this 8 months before my lease ends though, really limits possabilities.

knights crossing scares me though, they have a horrible reputation.

and i'm really not trying to be a complainer here, its just that i'm writing this after being woken up by northgate's fire alarm at 6am this morning...

 

Heres a few ideas for you. East lake-they are nice, pretty darn cheap, you have no porch but you do have a doorstep,haha. Where I live- Heather Glenn- very quiet place but you can party without problems, older place but management and maitnance are pretty good, close to school. River Park- i want to move here, free canoe rentals, vaulted ceiling available for cheap, big apartments, quiet, nice. Chatham landing is also nice, i may look into moving into here if my place raises my rent. I also heard that there are some nice town houses downt that road across from the school( that ghetto looking road) but i heard they are nice and only 580 a month for a 2 bedroom townhouse with the kitchen downstairs. Its a never ending search man if just somone would open up the perfect place it would save everyone alot of trouble.

 

Check out Boardwalk aparments..I lived there my first year before moving in the frat house and i loved it. Big rooms...dead bolts...etc.

The parking is alright...But all in all i recomend living there,,,

Ken

 

I had a couple friends who lived at jefferson commons and seemed to like it as much as you can like college living spaces..

granted the best alternative is a frat house.

 

I lived at science drive 1.5 years ago... If the walls bother you I can vouch The whatever at Science drive is worse... I honestly think the walls at northgate are a huge improvement. And the internet was 10X worse then Northgate, is possible they upgraded the internet since I lived there, but the walls is something you need rebuild the whole building on.

I will admit the deadbolted doors are nice, not indestructable, friend of one of my roomates got robbed when soem drug dealer guys did a raid of the apartmetn complex they basically broke into 15 apartments to steall from bunch of people they knew had alot of drugs, he said they kicked through all the dead bolted doors.

And as for northgates crappy doors I know I already broke a door frame

I have heard good things about East Lake as well.

 

does northgate have apartments with larger floorplans?

the village at alafaya club was really nice, but they don't include internet which really sucks bad.

i went up to those new apartments on alafaya just north of campus... ehh well they're not student apartments. they're cheapest was a 1x1 studio apartment for 800 a month including no utilities.

i'm going to write down the suggestions and try to hit up a few apartments tomarrow as i have the day off from work.

 

come check out heather glen, on university past wendys.

 

northgate has some wired floor plans my current apartment, my bedroom is bigger then it was last year and my living room is alot bigger, but its still not as big as Science drive was, but the build quality is much better....

 

Stay FAR away from Jefferson Commons!

Jesus I live there right now ..and let me tell you, the amount of fights, vandalism, and crime and stuff should be enough to deter anyone.

The cops are there every weekend. They put new lights in on the basketball court on the one side, and that calmed things down. The cops were there every second weekend.

I don't really care about the parties, it's the stupid crap that comes along with drunk people gathering in large groups. lol

There were two cars before I left for xmas break that had their windows shattered and parts of their doors beaten up. It didn't look like anything had been taken from the vehicles, but even if they had...

Apparently 5 or 6 cars have been stolen right out of the parking lot.

I'm fearful for my SS. I hope it's not the next target one day.

On top of that, the management will tell you anything to get you in the door. I suppose that's our own fault for leaving it until it was too late to find other arrangements, but I'm so pissed off at them because everything we wanted and were told was available, wasn't. 3bd pool view....hm, oh yeah we don't have any of those apartments on the grounds. No wait we have two and they're booked. Ok, covered parking? No problem, here sign this, it's by your apartment. Hey whoops, we goofed and redid the numbering, you now have one across the complex. F*** that. Told them to shove it. Oh yeah, and now we're going $90/mo over our electric bill. BY NOT DOING ANYTHING. Everyone is. Their excuse - 'Florida Power increased their rates by 4%'. So how does that translate to $90/mo? Jeez.

Anyway... I HATE JEFFERSON COMMONS. If I'm still around, I'm moving back to Pine Harbour, or to Victoria Place. I never had a problem with anything at PH, and VP is looking nicer by the day...

Just my .02.

Chris

 

hehe Chris ?FL...

you jsut named ever student apartment complex in the area

The electricity thing is new, my girlfreind went over twice in 2 years of living there and both months they had a 5th person sleeping on the couch during the summer.

 

btw... if you want to hear some more renting woes....

I have a friend that lives with 2 sisters, the 2 sister's parents own the hosue and she pays rent to live there, she came back form Xmas break, and apparently a pip busted in the ceiling and caved in one of the sisters rooms, and the pipe dumping about the equivalent of a garden hose into the house for nearly 2 weeks straight...

yeah... that house is really f-ed up she got home the 2 sisters and there parents(landlords) are in Tennesee somewhere unable to get in contact with, she is not really sure what to do and doesn't want to touch anything in case it ****s with insurance.

I will admit was kinda cool, don't really get to see a a graden hose wort of water spraying directly on a tower of a 2 month old computer.

BTW house looked to be in decent shape and was in Oviedo, so sometiems thou house thing isn't the best option.

 

the electric stuff is starting to worry me actually

northgate gives us like $120 a month for 3 bedroom 2 bath and even next year they're bumping up the electric cap!

whereas almost all other places give you a $90 cap in a 4 bedroom apartment... such crap

actually its starting to worry me even more now because i've got a computer running 24/7 that i might end up turning off now because of the cap. its got no monitor or anything its just the box but to go over the limit cause of that might make the roommates slightly pissed off

northgate will give you how much you spent on electric last month won't they? argh it sucks, cause it seems like northgate is the best one around here but i'm not terribly happy here. maybe i just need to move to a different building away from the entrance.

 

I do agree Northgate has lots of problems, but oveall they are not too bad compared to other places, and the price is alot cheaper. Bang for the buck, this place is a steal as college apartments go aroudn here.

I haven't worried about electricity cap at my place, I do whatever, but then agian, one of our rooms is empty, and I am usually at my girls place.

I like my new place 10X's mroe then my old apartment in building K, but during that year I had alot of car trouble, and carrying my 3-4 tool boxes weighing 15-60 lbs. ieach up and down 3 flights of stairs was getting old.

I really wish I had a garage....