The Pavilion at North Grounds

As a resident of The Pavilion for the past 8 months I would not recommend this community to anyone. My husband is a grad student at UVA and I work in the area. We were drawn to The Pavilion because of its proximity to campus, and the number of grad students living here. This is where the positives end. This building is horribly maintained and managed. Here are the pros and cons as I see them:
Pros:
–close to campus
–houses many grad students-​good for gathering socially
–accepts pets (if you do not have pets this is more likely a con)
Cons:
–the one elevator in the lobby is often broken (it has not been running for the past 4 days)
–the cleanliness of the common areas and hallways ranges from poor to disgusting (I have walked past spilled food and vomit within the past week)
–the building is poorly constructed– It is a fairly new building (one section was completed this past summer), but there are cracks in the walls and ceilings, plaster coming off the walls in chunks, poorly constructed fiberboard cabinets and cheap wood laminate floors. This building will not wear well and is already falling apart.
–trash piles up in the trash rooms
–the fire alarm goes off at odd hours for long periods of time (we were stuck on the parking garage roof for an hour at 11pm one evening)
–the internet that is included with rent is horrible and often has connection issues
–they continue to raise the rent as conditions deteriorate
There are many other great living options in the area such as Stonfield Commons and Huntington Village. I have friends who live in both. They pay the same as I do (1445/​mo for a 1 bed) and have much more space and nicer amenities. Please consider your options before choosing the Pavilion.

Morning, noon and night, this construction noise is LOUD and disruptive. This has been going on for many months with no relief or satisfaction from management. The management has us locked in pretty tight till the lease is up, so they have ZERO desire to do anything to rectify it. We can’t wait to get out of here!
I added a video to give you a taste of the CONSTANT noise, but I think they had it taken down.

Generally unhelpful and rude staff. Several maintenance issues that took far longer than needed to be fixed including having a door that would lock. The construction is also TERRIBLE. Everything feels cheap and is already starting to fall apart after only 6 months of use. Walls are thin and can hear neighbors above and next store even when they are simply walking in their apartments. Finally, there is no cell phone reception in the building. Instead of being honest and offering to install boosters for residents they lied and said AT&T and Verizon had down towers in the area.
In sum overprice for inferior quality.

Dear Resident,
We are aware how frustrating the fire alarms have been and we appreciate everyone’s understanding during this process. Our fire panel is very sensitive in an effort to maintain the safety of the building. Therefore, a legitimate smoke or debris trigger caused the alarms to sound in the building each time. There was no danger to anyone. However, the Charlottesville Fire Marshall will not let us turn off the alarms until someone has been to the property from the fire department and everyone has cleared the building. Unless notified of a test or drill, PLEASE always follow emergency protocol and evacuate the building.
Today, efforts have been made to move the location of the sensor that has been initiating the alarm each time. Also, a vent fan that was blowing debris across the sensor has been altered so that the air blows in a different direction.
We will continue to monitor our fire panel this week and mitigate any issues prior to alarms being sounded, if possible.
Let us know if you have any questions.
Thank you,
The P@NG Staff
Peak Campus Management, LLC.
This is the meager apology given after fire alarms two nights in a row woke the residents of these overpriced apartments up at 4 a.m. and then 3 a.m. in the morning. For me it was the last straw after a succession of issues in these apartments. These issues included the following: broken ceiling fans, granite countertops that somehow failed to be properly sealed prior to move-​in (which means they are not stain resistant), broken cabinetry, scratched up floors, noise coming from the halls and bad parking. Really instead of being treated like welcome guests in luxury apartments here they treat you more like inmates and threaten you with some new flyer taped to your door every other day. These flyers have threatened towing only a few days after parking passes were available for pickup and fines for having anything on your balcony that is not approved patio furniture (this includes bikes). Further, the flyers have threatened fines (they claim they will catch you on camera) if you don’t properly dispose of your garbage in the small chutes which was rather messed up since not everyone who had big boxes to dispose of moved in during the first week of August when the staff realized the garbage chutes would not work for such big moving boxes. Parking is just another issue since they just randomly assigned it and although it cost the same for everyone some people clearly got much better spots. But the real kicker is the cable situation because it is included in the rent and if that’s the case I would rather have it not included because it is only 480i. I didn’t even know that was possible with cable but it is and unfortunately most of the channels are fuzzy. Here it has just been one thing after another since I moved in and I have yet to see the luxury side of these apartments. When my lease is up I am gone as fast as I can pack my bags.

The owners of the Pavilion at North Grounds have been just about the most inconsiderate neighbors you can imagine — everyone from their office staff to their construction crews have been unresponsive to feedback and complaints about problems they have caused.
Based on my experiences dealing with everyone involved in the Pavilion project, I imagine they will be awful landlords as well.
Frequently, there are work crews working during late hours. In the fall, there were multiple nights where drilling occurred at 3AM, waking up everyone in the surrounding area. More recently, there have been tractor trailer trucks and construction equipment beeping away at 11PM or later. In addition, the construction workers have parked in neighbors’ assigned spaces, have littered all around the area, and frequently whistle and cat call at women that walk past.
Pavilion was contacted about all of these problems and they they gave assurances that they would be solved. As of April 26, ALL are still issues.
It turned out that their promises were empty words, something that would make me wary of leasing with the company.