Hiatus and Hate

So I stopped posting for a little bit and made my blog private... why? Several reasons..

1) Since I put this blog up, I knew I was bound to get some hate and feel some side effects. I thought I would get some hate from media or maybe, the developer, but I got a call from a tenant on my floor lambasting me about my blog and that I shouldn't have made it a public matter. The tenant said I should have taken it up with developer - "I know you're pissed off, but this is no way to take care of it, you should take it up w/ the developer, Gerding Edlen. They'll take care of you. The only thing you're doing is causing trouble and driving down our home values"...

2) That is a great segue to two other points.

A) When I approached Gerding Edlen about my problems they totally brushed me aside. My months of emails were escalated up the chain until I spoke with Mark Johnson, Gerding Edlen's Customer Care Head. With all the issues, I was hoping to at least get a nice water filter as compensation, but their response was that they took no culpability and that elevator failures, lack of hot water, lack of good drinking water, loud constant construction noise, and extremely delayed completion of amenities spaces were standards in construction. (btw, I was compelled to write this post b/c I was again woken up by construction on my day off. Let me sleep in. Please! will detail in another blog entry.)


B) About a month after with my meeting with Mark, Bellevue Towers slashed prices by 20% making my unit almost under water. Obviously this ticked me off big time. Unexpectedly, the realty company, Realty Trust, came to me and asked me my thoughts on the issue and said that I could make a proposal and that the ownership board would hear it out and make proper compensation. Really? Patrick Clark, the principal, at Realty, the person I met with, seemed like a genuinely nice guy and wanted to make amends between the current residents and the developer. I wrote a proposal on August 7th and was told that I wouldn't get a response from ownership 'til Christmas time. Four months? At this point, i'm assuming it is some stall tactic and that I'll be informed of the news of the Bellevue Towers condo auction soon... like Gerding Edlen's other projects http://www.oregonlive.com/business/index.ssf/2009/08/atwater_place_condos_headed_to.html


So basically, I stopped blogging after my fellow resident got mad at me for posting. They are on the same floor as I live on, so I didn't want to spread too much ill will. After a month of still being woken up by construction and various other mishaps throughout the building, I was ready to put the blog back up, but when I was contacted by Realty Trust about submitting a proposal, I decided not to. At this point, I'm still pretty pissed and lacking sleep. I'm waiting for feedback and in hopes that i'll get some decent news. But i'll start blogging privately (restricted viewing access) to vent my many frustrations that have still being going on since my last post.

No Exit

What? I can't leave through my lobby because of tile work? Why wasn't this done before I moved in? All Evening and tomorrow morning? How am I supposed to leave? Through the garage via the alleyway. Nice.

Roped

Woke up this morning to a nice piece of rope banging against my window. Sweet. Again, if you want to sleep past 8AM, this is NOT the building for you. Window washing waits for no one.

Cold Showers

When I went through my walk-through, I found that there was no hot water. I noted this as high priority to resolve before I moved in, but as per the typical at this building, it wasn't resolved fully when I moved it. So you know, usually, when you turn your faucet knob to all the way to the highest setting, you'll eventually get scalded, if not burned. When I first moved in, I would turn knob to almost breaking off to the hottest setting, but not much heat; I was getting lukewarm water for weeks. I was hoping it would warm up, but it never did. I finally got the construction team, Hoffman Construction, to come up to my unit to look at the issue, but as per their usual crack up job, they run some tests and come to the conclusion that the water is hot enough. Apparently, for regulations, it's not possible to have temperatures run over 120, but my water ran about 113-114 according to them. I don't know if their thermometer was off, but I had the faucet at the highest setting and it was a warm at best. Anyway, they left, saying that's the best they could do and that heat was working properly...

So that night, I attempted to take a shower. COLD WATER COMES OUT. I'm freezing my ass off, shivering, and drenched. I had to grin and bear and to take a cold shower. This. Sucks.

The next day, I get a plumber in and he looks at my unit and searches for the heat pump for a couple hours. He tells me the heat pump is busted. He fixes it and voila, the deficient heat pump was the cause of the cold/lukewarm water. I would have hoped they could have ensured I had hot water before I moved in. That would have been nice.

To quote a Bellevue Towers employee - "It would have been warmer if I tried to find a goat to piss on me (than to take a shower)."

Elevator? No, thanks, I'll take the stairs.

So I'm on my way to my usual run and I get to the elevators and push the button to go down. The doors creek open which is kind of odd. Intuition makes me a little weary about going in, but I need to go out for my run, so I step in. The doors close and the elevator doesn't move. Uh oh. I push some buttons trying to get it open, but nothing happens. I'm stuck in an elevator 17 stories high. I don't know if you would be unnerved, but the idea of ramming to down the ground at high speeds was whizzing through my head. The elevator starts to rattle and seems to be moving a little bit. I was thinking.... please just let me get through this alive. So I wait in this elevator which seems like an eternity (probably a minute in real time) and try to get someone on the emergency phone for help. Finally, after saying what I think are my final prayers, the elevator opens up.

They get the technician out to look at the problem. He takes it down for precautionary reasons; they were having troubles with it earlier. The technician says to me "I wouldn't be worried, this happens all the time to me in testing in new buildings" Umm.. I'm not a technician, I'm not used being stuck in elevators thinking I'm going to plummet to my imminent death.

So in addition to being stuck in the elevator, Bell Towers does air pressure testing regularly. They did this work until May 12th. So what does this entail?

1) High winds blowing through your hallways.

2) Limited usage of the elevator from 4-10PM. What's Limited Usage?
In order to used the elevator, a resident has to:
call the front desk
concierge calls testers to stop testing
elevator operator comes to your floor
So basically leaving your unit is a five minute process.


Again, I'm a newbie to "luxury" hi-rise units, but this was not my expectation moving in.

















[click to maximize] note: this notice was sent in early April. They had already been conducting tests prior to this.

Dust

There is dust everywhere in this place. The units pick up so much dust because of the construction around and above you. My last posts were not that easy to take a picture of, so I decided on this topic. This was a mopping after three days [click to enlarge]:















You'll also get dust bunnies. Multiplying like rabbits.













--S

P.S. - I just saw that Blogger has AdSense. Hopefully, my penny clicks can accumulate enough to get me some more swifter mops.

No Sleep

If you plan to move into the Bellevue Towers, you better be an earlier riser because undoubtedly, you'll be woken up by construction. Again, the further up you are, the more you'll be impacted as construction is still moving slowly up the building. I'm on the 1xth floor and I've been woken up at least 2x per week well before 8AM by construction. I've been woken up by things such as :

• Jackhammering at four floors above me
• Employees using staple guns to fix the floors one floor below me
• Workers fixing baseboards right out my door

And today, I had a construction worker barge right through my front door while i was sleeping at 720AM. I've spoken to management countless times about these issues, but the problems still continue. I had meeting w/ the developer, management, and sales team here last week and they promised that these issues would be resolved, but lo and behold, they weren't. typical.

At this point the only guarantee that's been made to me is that construction won't start until 8AM (though I don't know if this will happen given their track record), so if you want to sleep in during the mornings, I'd suggest you hold off on moving in. I've also asked for a schedule for completion of the floors surrounding me, but again, there were no definite answers.


--S

PS - If you didn't know this, since this is a commercial area, City of Bellevue allows for construction starting at 530AM. So if you're on a lower floor, don't think you're off scott free, the jackhammering from the city streets will get you.