The Park On Morton

"I have never lived here, but I get severely irritated when I get spammed with emails about living at apartment complexes in town because the business bought my email address from my university. Stop phishing and filling up our junk emails - your pathetic attempt at a mass, forced-to-read call out to fill your empty spaces only tells me that this apartment complex is struggling and nowhere I would want to live."

"While Park on Morton might have a promising, albeit mundane tour, I hope the reviews are enough to dissuade you from signing if you're on the fence. The apartment itself: Without factoring in anything else, the bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchen, and laundry are about as bang-average as it gets. Sure you get your own bathroom, the kitchen is reasonably spacious, and you can do your laundry, but if you're planning on paying just shy of 1k a month, this should be a given. The furniture is neglected, especially the cheap couches and chairs, to the point where I believe there was not an inspection done before move-in. Park on Morton is already punching above its weight class here, but by being indecisive enough to claim it as both "luxury" and "premium," it's comical. As a better alternative for better living quarters after having had renovations, the Monroe can be at least %25 cheaper. The location: This is what you're paying ~$300 a month for in my opinion. It's reasonably close to campus and downtown, but if this location is what you're after just put in some effort to look elsewhere. Unsafe: Park on Morton creates a facade of safety. You likely won't notice this on your tour as you will see an apartment in the leasing office, but the main building is concerning in terms of security. It doesn't take a prison architect to realize that the front stairwell, which is the first available door next to the street, can be opened without a key fob, so anyone can walk directly up to your door because the doors in that stairwell also do not require a fob. What makes this design all the more confusing is the parking garage. You would think it might be important to have cameras to ensure the safety of potentially millions of dollars worth of cars, but there aren't any to my knowledge. While it is required to use a key fob to get into the garage stairwell, some doors act as an in-between which is where the elevator is located. In one instance, I found a man sleeping in there. Navigating the building: Not only is it a nightmare to try to explain to those not familiar with Park's unintuitive design to get to your apartment, but it's mostly inaccessible. In a case of a random encounter with a delivery driver who was trying to deliver food to a customer, they had asked me if there was an elevator nearby to deliver the food. Because the only elevator was located on the opposite side of the building, I ended up offering to deliver the food to the resident because the driver had a health condition that prevented them from using the stairs. The residents: The residents are indicative of how the management style trickles down to the people who live there. The state of the hallways was for the most part disheveled, with trash and vomit being a welcome guest for most of my time spent there. Apartment number tags were torn down and exit signs were broken to the point of being unrecognizable. In another case, an entire street light fell over after a typical loud night. It should be easy enough to infer that yelling and loud music is a constant here. While it is obvious that some residents make the jobs of the management incredibly difficult, the consistency of all factors described make Park on Morton an unwelcoming and poor environment to live in."

"NOT WORTH YOUR MONEY Where do I even begin? The Park on Morton is considered a luxury apartment in Bloomington, but in my opinion, so mediocre. If I could go back I’d 100% sign someplace else like the Avenue (which is about the same price and closer to central campus) or spend a little more and live at 10th and college, the Verve, or Evolve. In comparison to the actual luxury apartments, POM isn’t really that nice. You do get quite a bit of square footage, an en-suite bathroom, but for $900+ a month, that should be a given. It’s not the worst apartment in Bloomington, but not quite worth what you have to pay. I have a lot to say for cons so I’ll start with pros… Pros: - Close to the Bloomington 6 bus line, but only that bus line - They have a feature on the resident portal that allows you to complete activities for points which can then be redeemed for gift cards. However, the gift cards usually take a month or longer to be sent to you Cons: - TRASH EVERYWHERE, all the time. Partly due to the residents, but there aren’t enough things done to maintain a clean and inviting property. -RESIDENTS that live here are really rowdy. There’s no sense of responsibility to keep the property well kept. Ex: Our apt door tag (along with many other people’s) got ripped off, broken glass on the sidewalks, really loud even on weeknights. This is made especially bad due to how thin the walls and floors are. We could OFTEN hear our upstairs neighbors. -PROPERTY DISARRAY. My floor’s fire extinguisher was missing for the longest time, broken ceiling panels would litter the floor, broken EXIT signs, broken emergency exit lights, etc -LACK OF SECURITY MEASURES. The apartment doors only have 1 “deadbolt style” door lock. No security cameras in the garage. The entrance/exit doors to the outside premises don’t have any security features either so theoretically, anyone could enter some of the buildings. -PEOPLE DRIVE VERY RECKLESSLY in the parking garages, made worse by the fact that there are no security cameras. My car actually got hit in the garage, and was left with a bunch of scrapes, but because there aren’t cameras, there was nothing I could do. -VERY INACCESSIBLE . It’s super difficult to locate any elevators -SUBPAR MAINTENANCE. If it’s not an immediate emergency, it won’t get taken care of until a long time and the staff isn’t that mindful of your space. For example, when our couches needed to be reupholstered, the staff just left any trash found in the couch cushions (from the previous tenants btw) and the old upholstery fabric all over the ground and tried to cover it up by putting our rug on top of the mess. We ended up finding pistachio shells, candy bar wrappers, old napkins, and dirt all over our rug and floor that we know did not belong to us (we vacuumed the place thoroughly when moving in). Additionally, maintenance and cleaning done in between tenants is not very through, very hastily done. I found nail clippings in my bathroom when I moved in. -LOW QUALITY FURNITURE. Our first sofas provided were peeling, you could feel the springs in the cushions, the dining room table had no stability, etc. -NOT WELL INFORMED STAFF. I would often have questions that the student staff wouldn’t be able to answer and would have to wait on a manager to get back to me. I will say, the property manager is very nice and does seem to know a lot and care about tenants. But it seems like upper management prevents real, helpful improvements from being made to the place. -OFFICE IS NEVER OPEN. The hours are often changing and they never seem to be open after class hours. -NOT GREAT COMMUNICATION POLICIES BETWEEN STAFF. For example: When returning my keys, I ended up mailing them in and USPS lost my envelope. Even though I called the front staff and was able to get the key charge waived, I still ended up with a lost key charge on my final statement balance. It took over a week of emailing and following up to get the charge removed."

"I had a great time here. It was definitely one of the best times I have had. I am very sad to leave- I really wish I had renewed my lease earlier! The living spaces are AMAZING!!"

"The park on Morton is a very gorgeous looking apartment complex. If you are looking for great amenities like I pool good-looking place to stay this is where it's at. Anyone who I've spoken to before has said that this is the place to go to. They don't have the same issues like some of these other apartment complex have. They're definitely a place to look into."