I thought I would post my review of Eastside Commons here, in case it’s deleted for whatever reason. It’s difficult to know what information would violate the site’s terms of service. Do readers have any strategies for writing apartment reviews?

The manager of this building continues to astonish me with her inaction and hateful attitude toward tenants, which is a shame because the building itself is kind of cute and in a nice location.

I don’t mean to say that Eastside Commons is without maintenance problems; the building is old and poorly maintained. Still, when problems are reported, management is slow to address or even acknowledge them. For example, the hot water heater shared by the entire building went out on a Saturday night, and, on Thursday, the manager still contended that it wasn’t broken, but “it is just taking longer for the water to get hot.” Tenants had gone the better part of a week without hot water, and she refused even admit there was a problem!

Other major problems with this place include pests, security, parking and noise.

About a month after I moved in, my apartment developed a major roach problem. I’ve lived in a variety of apartments over the past 15 years, and I’ve never seen a roach problem like this. It’s not a matter of a few roaches here, and there, but swarms of roaches teeming over kitchen surfaces and my computer desk at night, and many surfaces, such as my computer desk are dusted with the brown powder of roach feces. I have also seen what looked like a rat scurrying around the courtyard.

There are also human pests. It’s not at all unusual to see vagrants camping out by the dumpster in the back, which erodes my sense of security. I’ve had people hit me up for change inside the courtyard, despite the security gates, and people have even tried to sell me drugs!

Eastside Commons management seems to be aware of the security problems, but uninterested in addressing them. There are three sets of security gates on the property and all three are currently broken. On the front of the property, there is a parking lot gate, which is intended to protect the cars for folks who pay $25 a month for “secure parking.” The car gate seems to be broken more often than it seems to be working There is also a pedestrian gate which used to be opened with a digital security code. This was replaced with a simple mechanical lock, which is never locked.

Prospective tenants should be aware that there are also two gates in the rear of the building that present greater problems. These have been in various states of disrepair since I moved in two years ago. These gates are often propped open so tenants can let in their party buddies, and currently someone has bent pieces of steel to permanently prop them open. Other times, a gate will be locked, and, thanks to poor maintenance, be impossible to open from the outside. It’s easy to imagine someone getting mugged while struggling to get inside the building. I frankly think it would feel more secure management simply removed the gates than keep them in a permanent state of disrepair.

I should also note that I submitted a repair request in writing describing these problems to the manager, and after being locked out on a Saturday, sent her a frustrated email. When she responded she acted completely unaware of them. It’s not clear whether she was being disingenuous or simply incompetent, but given her other actions, I think she has a cavalier attitude toward the truth.

In addition to the broken parking lot gate, there are additional problems with parking. The Eastside Commons management offers two tiers of parking, the $25/mo secure parking with reserved spaces and unreserved spaces in the back. There are fewer unreserved spaces than there are people who would like to use them, so tenants frequently have to park on the street. When the new manager took over at Eastside Commons, she implemented a parking sticker system to cut down on the number of guests using these spots.

In principle, this parking policy sounds fine, but, in practice, it created substantial problems for me and other tenants. When she first announced the new policy, she instructed tenants to fill out an attached form, but failed to actually attach the form. This left me confused about how to get a parking sticker. Since the manager only held office hours during regular business hours and no weekend hours, I decided to wait for her to realize her mistake and post the forms on the door. This was a mistake. She towed my car. I was not alone, too. At least three other tenants said Chelsea had their cars towed, and when they complained she was nothing but standoff-ish. I still don’t have a parking sticker because I’m never able to find her at the office, and she refuses to take care of this over email.

There’s not much to say about noise. There’s a lot of it. If you like to have loud parties, this might be a good place for you. The previous manager lived on site, which cut down on some of the parties, but the new manager lives off site, so there are parties every night of the week and pool noise at all hours of the day. Pool rules such as no alcohol are routinely violated and people brazenly smoke marijuana in the common areas of the building. Last August, the pool was broken for nearly the entire month. While it speaks poorly of Eastside Commons management, I welcomed it because it cut down on the amount of party noise outside my unit. That is, until it looked like mosquitoes were breeding in the stagnant water.

There is so much more I have yet to mention, like the un-air-conditioned “fitness center” filled with broken equipment or the cancellation of internet service. Still, I want to end by saying that the major factor making Eastside Commons a miserable place to live is its management. The current manager is spiteful, performs maintenance only when it is critically necessary, and seems to be dishonest. I would strongly discourage anyone from living here.

I just heard a story on KUT that suggests the city plans to phase out parking meters in favor of multi-space kiosks. Under this scheme, motorists walk to a kiosk that serves several spaces on a block, the kiosk prints out a pass, and then the motorist walks back to her car to display the pass on her dash. It sounds like a hassle to me, but the story suggests drivers prefer it, perhaps because the machine accepts credit cards.

What does this have to do with cycling? Well, the parking meters are going away. I’ve read that cyclists in Washington and other jurisdictions have complained because they lose a lot of posts for locking their rides. Since bike parking is scant in several areas downtown, like Sixth Street, I wonder what impact this will have on cycling downtown.

Rather than stand in the way of progress, perhaps this is an opportunity to get more bike racks installed downtown. They have to do something with all those stump poles or holes in the ground, so why not install racks when the meters go out?

Does the city have a plan for replacing these bike parking spots when the meters come out?

After an initial classification question, the second question asks, “What is your primary mode of transportation to campus?” and offers “drive,” “bus,” “walk,” “carpool,” and “vanpool” as explicit options. Surely cycling is a more popular way to get to campus than a vanpool, and I wasn’t even aware that Austin offered vanpool services. This presents a coding problem for PTS as well, since it will under-represent students who cycle, since a number of responses like, “bike,” “bicycle,” “cycling,” or, hell, “fahrrad,” would all mean the same thing, and I doubt PTS is going to invest time into coding these other responses.

Since I’ve got some graduate-level training in survey design, I thought I would point out some other flaws in this survey. Questions four and five ask the respondent what times he or she usually arrive and leave campus. The possible responses are structured in one-hour intervals, like “8am-9am.” This may make sense for people who have rigid report times, but broader intervals would make more sense for professors and grad students who have flexible grad students, and nearly all undergrads get to campus just in time for their first class. There are two problems here: it doesn’t address the needs of two large populations on campus, students and faculty, and I don’t see how this question can provide good data with such narrow intervals, unless they’re only interested in employees who need to be at their desk exactly at 8:30.

The survey is clearly aimed at motorists who operate private vehicles alone, which I think reflects a profound bias in PTS, and this bias needs to be addressed.

The major thing that sticks out to me about East Riverside is its profound unfriendliness to pedestrians and cyclists, and what sticks out about the survey is much the same. Nearly all of the examples lack bicycle lanes and racks, and many of the proposed parking solutions present substantial blind spots that make it easy for motorists to ignore and kill cyclists and pedestrians. I’m a little disappointed in the city for not offering more cycling-friendly options. Still, I think it’s a good thing the city is doing something to address this sprawl in the inner-city.

I hope the Chronicle or The Austin Real-Estatesman will get on this story and sort it all out.

Update: UT student paper The Daily Texan has the scoop on the FDA’s closure of GoodFlow Juice Co.