All 15 tenant reviews.

“MAJOR NOISE ISSUE ON LOW FLOORS. While there are multiple things to like about the building (nice and helpful staff, location, finishes in apartment, hallway/garden design, concierge) there is a major unsolved issue that leaves a material portion of the building borderline unlivable. If you are considering apartments on the 4th floor, or on floors 5 - 7 in the middle of building, please be aware that a Lifetime Fitness gym opened to occupy the 3rd floor of the building. The gym opened about a year ago and unfortunately has insufficient sound insulation. During busy times with personal training sessions and group classes, you will hear a banging of weights that will radiate throughout your entire apartment. This is driven by two reasons 1) a structural issue in the building that causes a structure borne noise to travel throughout multiple floors (there have been complaints from gym noise documented as high as the 17th floor) 2) gym mismanagement/poor behavior by gym staff and gym members not using cushioned mats or completing exercises that involve dropping of weights/equipment in non sound insulated areas. On point 1 above, sound waves travel quicker the denser the material - meaning that sound travels differently through air and a solid. Given this sound issue is caused from an "impact" that travels through the structure of the building, when in your apartment, the banging/pounding sounds like it is right next to you. It is virtually impossible to sleep through and is loud enough to overpower TV/Music, etc. The issue has been ongoing for about 6 or 7 months and will consistently occur in 5-20 minutes blocks the following times (Monday 7:30am - 8:00am and 5-7pm, Tuesday 6:30am - 8am and 5pm - 8pm, Wednesday 6:45am - 8:00 am and 5pm, Thursday 6am - 7:30am and 5pm - 7pm, Friday 6:30am to 10:00am, Saturday 7am, 9am, 11am, Sunday 10:30am - 11:30am). It will also occur other times but less consistently (1pm, 10pm, early in morning, etc.) Given the above, there have been 100s of complaints from tenants from dozens of units over the past 6+ months and there has been no progress going through the building, Pan Am or directly to the gym. For this particular issue, the building/Pan Am have gone out of their way to obfuscate and hide information. If you are a new resident and start complaining about this, the first answer will be along the line of "thank you for bringing this to our attention, we will assign staff to look into what is causing the noise and find a solution" when they are well aware of the issue and have months of documented complaints (tenants speak to other tenants). The building held several meetings to discuss a resolution directly with the management of Lifetime Fitness. These meetings have been counter productive. The first meetings led to investment of further sound insulation and the addition of a drop ceiling but in only one area of the gym. This area of the gym is now used for individual workouts (such as squats and deadlifts). However, do to poor communication/lack of understanding of the issue by building management, this actually made the problem worse for apartment residents. The renovations pushed all personal training sessions and group classes (in which 5-20+ people attend at once and complete such exercises as dropping weights to the ground, throwing medicine balls to ground, etc.) into a center area of the gym with wood floors, no sound insulation and next to the center foundational pillars of the building. Given the "capital investment" by Lifetime, pushed by the building, Lifetime feels it has done enough and the relationship between the two parties has deteriorated. Complaints directly to the gym now fall on deaf ears. Additionally, Pan Am has a ~$50 million agreement with Lifetime to bring gyms to other properties and they have yet to significantly intervene. This issue is in violation of the NYC noise ordnance, is well documented by 311, but the city has yet to intervene. Given the above, unless you are considering a high floor, I would suggest avoid moving here.”

“Avoid the 16 line like a plague! I lived there for 3 years until recently when it became unbearable. The new Lifetime gym has weightlifters who slam weights on the floor and your entire apartment reverberates and shakes! Building management don’t want to do anything about it. Avoid this place for your own peace of mind.”

“Do not move here! There are consistent earthquake like thuds and noises if you live in the 14, 16 and 18 lines, coming from the new Lifetime gym that just opened a few months ago! You will not be able to work peacefully at home, work will be disrupted, your peace of mind will go, you will be woken up at 6am to loud thuds coming from the gym where people are dropping weights, I live a couple of floors above the gym but others who live 5-6-7 floors above feel the same exact thing!”

“The noise from the construction below (lifetime fitness) is very disruptive I also understand that they Will be renovating the front of Best Buy on 23rd street because of the retail below and the constant move in and move outs I would not recommend living here as over the past 2.5 years there has always been something”

“Highly recommend this property if shopping around the neighborhood. We have lived here since 2014 and it's been a wonderful experience. The premises are safe, clean, comfortable and the staff is helpful. The location is key with access to everything.”

“The Caroline APPEARS to be an upscale building but from what I hear from friends, the noise situation is unbearable. The managing agents don't seem to want to assist tenants in rectifying the noise coming from the Health Club. Ive written this property off my list. Stay away.”

“TL;DR - Terrible ownership ruins what would otherwise be an amazing building! I live in the Caroline and have to say that the building has many wonderful qualities. The facilities are amazing, the staff is generally friendly and helpful, and the units are beautiful - not to mention that the building is perfectly located in the city. Unfortunately, the way that the ownership company (Pan Am Equities) runs their property leaves a lot to be desired. The unit I live in sits several floors above the gym and due to poor insulation you can hear weights being dropped on the floor all the way up in my unit (and I've heard that this issue goes even higher into the building than where I am). After speaking with the building manager, I was assured that this issue would be solved, but that I would need to speak with Pan Am, who also owns the gym. No problem right? Guess again! It took over a month of calling, leaving voicemails, writing letters and emails to finally get in touch with someone at the company, and once that happened they proved utterly unwilling to address the issue. EVERYTHING the building manager promised turned out to be "impossible" according to Ownership: - Let's talk to the gym and get them to put up signs? NO WAY - Let's get the gym to put padding or sound insulation around the weight area? WHAT A JOKE - Maybe we can move you to another unit away from the noise? NOPE - Maybe we can talk about reducing your rent? NONSTARTER - Maybe we can let you out of your lease? NOT A CHANCE So in summary, an otherwise wonderful building is ruined by cheap construction and an utterly apathetic outlook from ownership.”

“The Caroline is an outwardly wonderful residential building in Flatiron. Very pretty. Clean. Modern. Great front desk and maintenance staff. Outstanding amenities. But Pan Am's management of the building makes it one prospective tenants should AVOID My daughter Jenna lives in the building. She has had a unrelenting banging noise in her apartment since she moved in. After some sleuthing, she discovered it was coming from people dropping weights in the gym on the second floor. A gym the company that manages the building also owns. Many residents hear the repetitive banging. I've been in Jenna's apartment and the noise is loud and intrusive. So loud it interrupts sleep. It's exceptionally LOUD in the lobby. The Caroline's own front desk staff is subject to it all day and they don't like it either. It sounds like somebody is dropping weights on your head...because they ARE! Pan Am has been asked to mitigate the constant noise but refuses to take even simple or easy steps residents have requested: @ Signage at the gym asking members not to drop weights. Common in many gyms. @ Policing of the no dropping policy by gym employees, as is done at many gyms. @ Thicker mats be placed in the weight lifting area. The signs and mats would be about a $500 investment to eliminate a constant disruption to tenants who pay $3000+ a month in rent. As a business owner who is constantly focused on satisfying my customers, I am amazed at how Pan Am is operating its business. it tells me something is very wrong with management. Why piss off one, let alone multiple residents for that paltry amount of money and effort? It will make The Caroline more habitable if tenants don't hear unnecessary noise. There's more than enough noise in most Manhattan apartments. Why go out of your way to make your tenants hear more noise. Crazy, eh? Hey Pan Am management! If you monitor these reviews, I suggest you take a look at the current United Airlines PR debacle. (Ironically Pan Am was also the name of the once-largest airline in the world that later went bankrupt). You are responding with a similarly callous customer service approach, albeit on a lesser scale. And you are pissing off a dad who really, really loves his daughter and hates seeing her being wronged and distressed. So,Pan Am, please take care of my daughter's noise problem. Quickly. Then we won't t have to continue to publicly shame you. And because it's the right thing to do.”

“While The Caroline, owned by Pan Am, appears lovely, I wouldn't recommend living here if you want to sleep. Someone I know has lived in this building for a few months, and every morning around 5am is woken by a loud banging noise. On the nights I've slept over there, I've been woken by it as well. Turns out, the banging is the sound of people dropping weights in the gym (owned by Pan Am) connected to the building - the sound travels up the pipes because the building isn't properly insulated. It can be heard LOUDLY as high as the 8th floor, and in many of the apartment units! The building has been totally uncooperative in coming up with solutions - they won't let her out of the lease, they won't move her apartment, and they said they would CONSIDER putting a sign up in the gym asking people not to drop their weights (which really won't help anyway). Sleep deprivation is a torture tactic. Way to go Pan Am, you're torturing people.”

“We have lived at the Caroline for several months now. Since we moved in, we have been dealing with a consistent banging noise in our apartment, which wakes us up every morning. This noise starts at 5:30 AM and continues until 11 PM at night. We do not sleep anymore. After some investigation, we learned that this noise is resulting from the NYHRC, which is several floors below our apartment. When member drop free weights on the floor, the noise is reverberating UP through the building. We have discussed this issue with our neighbors and EIGHT other apartments have this issue - the gym is on the third floor and the noise goes all the way up to floor 8. You can also hear the sound like a gunshot in the lobby. It is incredibly disturbing. The gym doesn't do anything to mitigate this - there are no mats, no signs, and dropping weights does not result in members being reprimanded, like it does in most other gyms. After months of working with building management and the real estate company, Pan Am (who ALSO owns NYHRC) we were told that ultimately, nothing is going to be done to resolve this issue. The gym will not do anything, and the building will not do anything. We are being forced to continue living in an unbearable situation even though there are so many cheap, simple fixes that the gym can make to solve this issue. All 8 of our neighbors that share this issue must continue to to live like this. Every person that enters the lobby in the Caroline must be forced to hear this noise. I am truly disappointed and appalled by the Caroline - which is supposed to be a luxury building - for completely ignoring such a serious and pervasive issue.”

“Nice building. Loved our apartment- it was a corner unit and far from the 23rd/6th traffic noise. All of the doormen and concierge staff are awesome- really nice people. It is decorated tacky but then again you don't live in the lobby. Beware of John and Pat in the management office though. They are extremely rude and at times threatening. When I was moving out- and was doing an internal transfer to another tenant taking my apartment as-is- John told me, which he didn't have the right to- that he would get into my apartment to do an inspection "one way or another", and then hung-up on me. Really nice way to treat a tenant who lived in the building for three years and gave John & Pat $50 each for their holiday bonus every year. I should have seen the writing on the wall around John- rumor is he was arrested for entering a girls apartment without notice. I also know that when there are issues in the building the handymen are not allowed to leave until they are fixed- regardless of what time it is. We once had handymen try to enter our apartment at 11P (without notice) to check for a leak. Furious, I called John the next day who told me that's standard practice as he doesn't allow these guys to leave until they find the source of the leak. Can you imagine if my wife got up in the middle of the night and saw two men in her living room searching around in the dark with flashlights? So- if you live here- when the holidays come around, give to the concierge, handymen and doormen, but don't give to anyone in the office (John and Pat) as they really couldn't care less about the tenants- they are just cattle to them.”

“This is a pretty good looking building in a great part of town. http://www.thecarolinerental.com/ has some nice photos of the Caroline. I am looking into renting a one bedroom there now. With all the amenities this place really seems like a good deal. Close to the train, lots of restaurants rite there and a gym in the building!”

“This is one of the nicest buildings in Chelsea. Great apartments and amenities. The building includes a game room, roof deck, valet, and resident lounge. The neighborhood has every convinience, including a Whole Foods and Garden of Eden within walking distance. If there is one negative, certain front desk staff can be very belligerent, particularly Albert.”

“Classy, upscale building with a great location.I've lived in this building for 4 years & I am resigning my lease in July. Even though the rent has increased over the years, mine has remained unchanged because I have been a resident of the building. The staff is extremely friendly & welcoming. The Doormen are always smiling & ready to hail you a cab. Accomodations are amazing. N.Y. Health & Raquetball Club is located in the building, along with valet parking. Housekeeping, dry cleaning & laundry services are also available. Beautiful grounds with a courtyard garden & swimming pool. Walking distance to all the Hot Spots & just minutes from the Hot Meatpacking district. It is getting extremely pricey for new residents, but if you can fit it into your bubget it is well worth it. Its a gorgeous building and you are made to feel as though you are living in the Ritz Carlton or The Plaza Hotel. You feel like royalty and pay alot less than if you were living in those buildings.”

“I just moved in this week but sofar I love it! Buildingmanager welcomes you and anything you want to have done or changed is possible. Building staff is friendly and the appearence ofeverything is superb.”