515 W Briar - PPM Apartments

It was what it was.
Jul 24th, 2023

Fantastic location and place to live!
Dec 16th, 2018

I have issues with the company that manages this building (PPM), but I'll keep this review confined to the building itself. I lived on the 7th floor from October 2021 to September 2022. Elevator - The most glaring issue is that there's only one small elevator for the whole building and it's OLD. It has a door that you open and a cage that you pull to the side with a lot of exposed mechanisms. It doesn't always stop exactly at your desired floor and it stops VERY ABRUPTLY. It's scary to say the least. It also breaks OFTEN (and often with people in it), and it can take DAYS for it to get fixed because it's just so old. If you're disabled to the point where you can't take the stairs to your unit, you frankly cannot live here. The elevator is just not reliable enough. I should also mention that because this elevator is very manual, people can sorta mess with you while you're in it if they don't understand how it works. Also on the topic of elevators, the freight elevator is kinda small, large sectional couches probably wont fit. General Maintenance - The building is solely managed by a guy named Robert, he's very knowledgeable but the only way to contact him is by calling him which is pretty annoying. PPM's rent portal allows you to submit maintenance requests which he monitors, but he ignored about 80% of my requests. Internet - Despite being an old building, it has fiber optic internet connections serviced by ATT, my ping to various Chicago servers hovered around 5ms and download speeds were crazy as expected. Laundry - Washers and dryers both cost $1.50 per load, you need to use quarters and there's no change machine in the building...in the midst of a coin shortage. But the machines are pretty reliable. Yeah... Heat - I can't speak for all units but my unit had very old radiators that were not adjustable, and my unit didn't have any sort of thermostat or even a breaker box which was weird. I was basically just at the whim of the building's climate control. The unit you're interested in probably doesn't have AC so you'd have to budget a few hundred bucks for a portable AC. Water - Again, I can't speak for all units but water temps in my unit fluctuated a ton. The temp regulator for the shower didn't work at all, my shower would go from freezing cold to literally scalding hot on a whim. And my kitchen never had hot water. Every single request to fix this was ignored... Miscellaneous stuff - The bike room is good. The location is great, there's absolutely no reason to need a car around here. The street parking is nonexistent and the parking garages are unreliable. The soundproofing is fantastic (except for the entrances of each unit) as the building is mostly brick. There's a decent package receiving room but there's definitely some package thievery that happens. There's a mini dog park to the side of the building. Overall, I believe you get can get better bang for your buck. PPM is one of the rental companies that charges extra for the price of convenience. However, if you have a dog, this would be a decent place since there are a lot less options for you.
Apr 5th, 2023