The towers of Colonie are a safety and pest hazard and I cannot forewarn apartment seekers to stay away in stronger terms. I enjoyed the location which was convenient to my Wolf Road office and nearby shopping, but the pest and safety problems were very concerning. The apartment complex has a widespread rodent infestation that's a result of poor integrated pest management. The outside grounds are where the majority of maintenance efforts are performed (landscaping). The result is that the
...interior of the towers resembles public housing. The elevators are frequently out, lighting fixtures burn out and are a major safety concern especially in the stairwells which frequently have homeless taking shelter in the window. The security is good on the front entryway with the buzz-in system, but the side and rear doors are frequently left propped open and on several occasions I found the locks broken and able to operate without a key. The interior carpeting is filthy and 5 minutes of scrubbing a small patch of the hallways with a rug doctor resulted in the water being completely black with dead insects and such in the water as well. The laundry machines frequently were out of order, pipes in the laundry room would rupture and flood without and sort of clean up involved in the maintenance response (to prevent mold, mildew growth). Very little preventative maintenance was witnessed in the interiors of the buildings, as well. Very old and cheap outlets would arc and fail in the winter, and the fuse for my heat was bizarrely tied to the circuit for the living room outlets, which resulted in having no heat in the winter and sluggish response from the management.
Pest problems were frequent. My unit very clean and had minimal food waste or other garbage left around -no reason for this since there is a garbage chute on each floor. Nonetheless, mice and larger rats appeared in the unit scampering about, and the maintenance response was again sluggish and unacceptable. The maintenance man used steel wool to sloppily patch the rat's chewed hole in the cabinet to prevent entry instead of replacement. There was a complete lack of building-wide pest response as I am accustomed to from experiences living in rental units in NYC and Poughkeepsie. Additionally, other pests like beetles, earwigs were common occurrences. Worst of all were bedbugs, each unit on my floor became infested with bed bugs.
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