4310 Av Old Orchard

montrealer32

Reviewed on Mar 23, 2016

Overall score

12345

Concierge rarely answers the phone and if he does he’s out of the city. If you manage to corner him in the hall he’ll promise to show up to look at the problem and will forget until weeks later. Oh, and don’t forget the weird sexual comments he’ll make the whole time. My favourite was the time he asked my roommate if the broom in our kitchen was the one my roommate used for beating me. We spent two months without a ceiling in our bathroom (see pictures) because he ripped it out due to water damage and then forgot. The management company is a joke and doesn’t care. They didn’t respond to registered letters and didn’t begin fix the issue until we opened a file with the Régie. The building is absolutely falling apart, which is a shame because it’s a gorgeous old building. If they invested a bit of time and money they could charge much higher rent.

We had to call the building inspectors several times and the building was repeatedly fined for things like not having a proper lock on our apartment door (we relied on the doorknob lock the whole time – luckily our unit was basically impossible to find), no ventilation in the laundry room, no plate covers on our electric outlets, water damage in the hallways, but none of the issues were ever fixed. NDG city inspectors are good people though. If you do move in here, make sure to look up their number, you’ll need it.

For a while the laundry room was being broken into on a regular basis and for months you could rarely wash your clothes because, of course, nobody did the repairs because nobody could reach the concierge to tell him and the management company ignored calls, emails, and letters. At one point the concierge had a knife pulled on him when he interrupted the thief when trying to do his own laundry. After that they finally got around to putting in card-operated washer and dryer. There is only one washer and one dryer for the whole building (15 units) and the new washing machine chews and destroys clothes sometimes.

The neighbourhood is absolutely amazing and is the only reason we ended up staying here for over two years. The noise insulation is mostly great, although you hear everything out back: morning deliveries, arguments between restaurant staff, bar staff throwing empty bottles into the recycling. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve heard my neighbours though. The unit right over the front of the pub can apparently hear all the music they play, so be careful if you’re not a night owl.

For some unfathomable reason, the building is heated to 29 degrees in the winter. The building temperature is controlled centrally somewhere so you can’t turn it down at all. I guess it’s better than being too cold, but you will probably spend all winter with your windows open. Couldn’t they just turn the heat down, save the money, and spend it on a competent concierge instead?

I would only recommend this building if the concierge and management change.