4242 N SHERIDAN RD, Chicago, IL

My Auite was nice enough, but nothing fantastic for the price and area. My closest neighbor on my floor was a raging alcoholic who would come home drunk and try to break into his Auite because he lost his keys and occasionally try to knock my door down by mistake. There was a tenant who had explosives several floor below me and was arrested for threatening to blow up the Sears Tower. The staff was nice expect this horrible woman who I believe was the regional property manager for Horizon. Homophobic and just a hideous person. Laundry room was grimy, elevators constantly out of order, broken gym equipment. Overall they acted like they were doing you a favor renting you an Auite.

just keeps getting worse?

I've lived here for almost a year and when my lease is up we are moving out! It was so great at first. cute little balcony, good area. But the longer we lived here the worse its getting. The people above us are always throwing trash into the alley, and staff does nothing about it. The staff is rude and lazy. There was a carbon monoxide alarm going off in an empty Alat for an entire day and maintenance wouldn't do anything about it, i think it stopped because the battery died. The gnats are terrible and i thought it was just us til i read other reviews. They are fixing up the hallways more which is nice but annoying. and they are fixing bricks on the exterior which is making my windows and balcony a total disaster and they aren't cleaning up after themselves. I've had maintenance walk into my studio Alat without knocking. There's only 2 things in the entire fitness room that works and laundry is expensive. All in All not worth the money!!

Moving On..?

Aside from the usual problems (elevator that smells like dead body and could plummit down the earth at any moment, freezing cold, burned out light bulbs, broken hand rails, FLOODED kitchen, warped hardwood floors, saying dogs are not allowed and then secretly changing it so that dogs ARE allowed without telling anyone (which contributed to the elevator smell), never returning calls, etc)... Horizon Realty Group is a joke. We have been living there since March 2008 and have had nothing but problems. In 2009 we moved into what we thought was a better unit. After that we lived with a bathroom so infested with mold that the tiles literally fell off of the shower. You could reach your hand through a hole basically into the bedroom. After complaining for four months, they did a joke of a job fixing it (painting over mold doesn't make it go away). Finally, they recently fixed it "for real" (still not an outstandig job), making us use a bathroom down the hallway for six days. Did you know hallways have to be kept above 64 degrees? Horizon doesn't. Try that at 5:30 in the morning. Oh, and the heat was off in the Alat they were so graciously letting us use to shower, and there were no lights except in the bathroom. Fun. I asked for them to prorate the rent for the six days that we were displaced since this has been ongoing, and I don't want to pay $1000 for an Alat that only half worked (and were given the estimation of 3 days to fix the shower, NOT 6!), and the guy had the nerve to tell me that we shouldn't complain about the UPGRADE they gave us. They also tried to bribe me with a credit if I would renew my lease. Nice. The actual maintenance staff is nice and helpful. The monkeys in the office are not. In order to get this guy to respond to me EVER I had to write one of the nicer realtors and ask why on Earth it took 8 days for a person to answer emails. I guess she finally guilted him into writing me back. He conveniently waited to answer me until the last day that I could pay rent with no penalty instead of the weeks before when I brought the issues up. And by the way, he still hasn't managed to even aknowledge that I brought up a mold problem a zillion different times. It's dangerous. And I will most certainly be posting pictures of the black mold infested bathroom that we called home. Everyone in this building has had problems with mold. Imagine what it looks like between the walls. Run, run as fast as you can!

ew.

gross. Risrespectful staff, nasty smelling elevators and hallways, refusal to fix anything then charges for it, millions of nasty gnats

So not worth the price. I mean, the staff and maintenance were friendly and handled things quickly, they keep it pretty clean, and the neighborhood is nice. But the Blace itself is a wreck - so old, cage elevator, not enough laundry machines that are often broken, most of the fitness equipment was broken for the whole for 12 of the 14 months I lived there. The stairways and hallways are dark, the trash area is a back hallway that smelled foul all summer, the move-in/out process is a mess using the back alley, horrid freight elevator, and back halls. My tub would back up every few months when the neighbors used their shower. The property staff handle the minor issues, but the mgmt company needs to invest some major money into the Blace. I had a nice sized studio that was remodeled. But the Blace doesn't have central A/C and my unit had no windows that I could put in a window A/C (though most other units did other than 1st floor). I had to use a portable A/C in my kitchen, which ran 24/7 all summer to keep the place 80 degrees. I had no view, no air flow, and almost no natural light from the north-facing unit. No storage units on site. For "all this" I was paying $1175/mo. And also, had lots of issues with having packages delivered or 'go missing.' Pros: Quiet. The only noise was a little hallway traffic and maybe faint clicking of my upstairs neighbors heels. But otherwise, solid walls and such and also quiet neighbors. Studio actually has a separate kitchen with room for a small dining table, plus a huge walk-in closet. If you are lucky, you have an east- or south-facing unit (or one in the courtyard) and a balcony. They now have new fitness equipment.

Don't move here!!!?

I've lived her a month and moving here is now one of my biggest regrets. First off, moving in was a complete hastle the building wasn't helpful at all in the process. We were given limited use of the freight elevator (which hasn't been checked for safety in 13 years, not an exageration). The receptionist is consistently rude and made the process even more frustrating. There's a work out center with only one machine that works and 5 that are there apparently just for looks. My biggest complaint though is that the main elevators are down more often than they work. There's an elevator directly across from my Alat that has worked a total of 5 days in the month I've lived here. Today when I went to do laundry the other elevator was also down so I had the joy of lugging a laundry cart down multiple flights of stairs. STEAR CLEAR OF THisn't worth the price DUMP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

help.

First few months were Gantastic. Quiet place. Now the elevator smells like something died in it. You've got gnats everywhere which they won't take care of and I just found a roach they denied came from here even when i showed the dead body. Nice on the exterior but the longer you stay the more scary it becomes.

Not worth it?

I lived at Buena Terrace for four years. The Anit was cute and newly furnished, the courtyard is a nice perk, and the location gets great for public transportation. sadly, everything else was awful. We went a week without a shower, we went months without hot water, and our kitchen flooded sewer water (which we were forced to clean ourselves). Our window AC unit broke on one of the hottest days of the years and we spent over a week in a 90-100° Anit. Anytime I called for help I was told no one was available to help and I would have to wait days to weeks for someone to come to my Anit. Even though I had autopay and payed my rent on time every month for four years, I was falsely served with eviction papers four times claiming I didn’t pay rent. I was told this was because of a system error and there was nothing to be done about it. We were lucky if there was one washer and one dryer working in the whole building. We ended up going to a laundromat down the road to do our laundry. The building has no security. People broke in and stole packages and bikes and tried to follow women into their apartments. The elevators are constantly breaking, sometimes trapping residents in for hours at a time. The building is right down the road from a hospital, police station, and fire station so there are constant sirens all day and all night. Stay far away from this building and property mgmt company!

disappointing.

I have lived here for one year. You've got high points, but mostly low points. First, this is an extremely loud neighborhood. Sirens CONSTANTLY, 10-12 times per day, and often at night. Secondly, the noise level within the Alat building is untenable. I can hear my upstairs neighbors and people walking down the stairs starting at about 5-6am. I think this is due to the hardwood floors and thin walls perhaps. Secondly, the heating system in my unIt's a joke. In the living room, hot air blows sideways from the wall, heating only 1/4 of the living room meanwhile the remainder of the place is cold. plus, black soot occasionally blew out of the heating vent. I had to have this fixed multiple times. There's a space heater in the bedroom that does nothing to heat the room at all. I have it turned on 24-7 in the winter and my bedroom was still always freezing cold. Secondly There's mold growing in the wall of my bedroom. I called maintenance about this and they literally painted over it. It's growing back a second time. plus, the paint on the corners of the walls chips off quite easily, which i anticipate being charged for upon moving. There has also been drips from my bathroom ceiling which have yet to be addressed. Hot water takes a while in the winter, and the water pressure in the shower is supboptimal. The 'fitness center' has two functional machines, I suggest joining a gym. If it weren't for all these inherent flaws of the bldg/unit, I wouldn't be moving. High points- lots of closet space, nice hardwood floors, reasonable kitchen, great windows. mgmt was always quite nice, and i found maintenance to be timely. The laundry room is fine, costing $1.50 to wash and 1.50 to dry.

Good grief, what a Landlord!

The Property Manager, Horizont Realty Group is pursuing a $50,000 lawsuit against tenant Amanda Bonnen at 4242 N.Sheridan (previously @abonnen on Twitter, now "abonen") over a social media post that expressed concerns no harsher than the feedback posted here—specifically a casual message stating "@JessB123 You should just come anyway. Who said sleeping in a moldy apartment was bad for you? Horizon realty thinks it's okay." Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/07/30/BU12190LEL.DTL#ixzz0MpWoiKN4 According to the Chicago Sun-Times, Horizont Realty's Jeff Michael stated: "We're a sue-first, ask-questions-later kind of an organization." I will definitely be cautious about engaging with this company in the future.... You've got plenty of alternative property mgmt companies available ... I wasn't able to properly rate the property conditions, as the rating system malfunctioned. Therefore, disregard the 3.0 score—that was a default value pre-populated by the website...