Colonial Gardens Apartments

"I was assaulted right outside my apartment. My arm was broken and my car stolen. My house keys were also stolen and the complex took over a week to put in a work order for lock replacement."

"The host apartment complex ever. They will do literally anything to keep your security deposit. They have rats in the d-g buildings. I’ve waited a whole year to Get a kitchen light fixed. Make sure you take Pictures before you move in and after. The door is always broken to get into the complex. Do not move here !"

"I move out here in 2014 nice place for my first 3yrs then another company took over management now place is trash!! Trash all over & hallway stay dirt, laundry room never clean ,power goes all the time, squirrels living in the roof ,stank bugs come in your apartment ever winter its just horrible here I moving when my lease is up next year oh and the price the want to live here is not worth it"

"The new Management sucks. There’s never any parking, but yet everyone is suppose to have a parking pass smh I’ve called several times and still nothing’s changed. How am I suppose to go to work and come home when there’s no parking in front of my building because they’re just letting anyone park here now."

"Colonial Gardens provides far from a favorable living experience. That lesson is you get what you pay for. At the end of my lease I could not be more eager to leave this poorly managed and maintained apartment complex. The problems I had with colonial gardens had less to do with the unit itself and more to do with the current residents and management of EMESS. Starting with current residents. Our building was full of people who didn’t care about the building. Our laundry room was always filthy with left over clothes and lint all over the floor. One person had dumped a bunch of kitty litter in the washer which was not cleaned up for weeks. Eventually I got fed up and cleaned it myself. A mattress and trash stayed dormant in the main stairwell for weeks. The kids in my building/in the complex are extremely rude and careless. One time they smeared marshmallow fluff, ice cream sandwiches, and what looked like Russian dressing all over the back stair well and the steps outside…again this was not cleaned for at least 2 weeks. The management at Colonial Gardens is terrible. They provide little to no answers or support. The front office, run by EMESS Management, has a high turnover of employees. In the year I was there I saw 4-6 new front office workers. They have to manage 2 apartment complexes, Colonial Gardens and Alexandria Apartments, so they are overworked, but that doesn’t excuse their ignorance to policies and procedures. One run in we had with management occurred about half way through our lease. My roommate and myself were accused and warned for smoking marijuana in our apartment. Never once did anybody knock on our door, further investigate if it was us, list on the complaint who complained/which employee wrote up the warning, the time they were there, or talked to anybody that lived there…nothing. We just had a warning slapped our door and a threat that if there is another report we will be fined and face possible legal action. When I contacted them about this they had no answers for me other than it was “just a warning”. However, this was not us but we had no way of proving that so we just had to eat the fine. Another gripe I had with management occurred during a fire in my building the fire department had to break the front door down to get into the building. It took management almost 2 whole months to get a new door for the building leaving our building potentially susceptible to anything. Another bad management experience we had occurred when moving out. We were charged for our carpets to be replaced ($950). The carpets did have a stain on them which is justified…however when I asked if I could go on the walk through with them of the apartment they said it was not necessary. They completed the walk through and got several things wrong. When I asked to talk to the woman who did my check out I found out she no longer worked there…no surprise. At the end of the day I owed EMESS $230…so if you do choose to live there make sure you clean the apartment…ever nook and cranny because they obviously want to squeeze every dime out of you. I would never recommend these apartments to anybody no matter how cheap the rent is. The insufficient knowledge of Management is unacceptable, but then again how do you expect anybody to learn policies with a revolving door of employees every 3 months. The ignorance of the current tenants is also a major problem. Nobody there cares about the complex enough to maintain it let alone clean it up a bit. The kids run the complex and are rude and loud at any point of the day. The building is old and poorly maintained despite the hard work of maintenance to keep the buildings working properly. Some of my problems I experienced may only have occurred to me and my roommate, but I would take my words into consideration when determining if Colonial Gardens is right for you…for us, we were never happier to leave this terrible living situation."