Ascend at Red Rocks

You people need to do something about this HORRIBLE parking situation. Worst thing about this place is parking. Walking To my car, late at night (that’s when I get home from work) 3 blocks, in the super icy & not very well maintained parking lot is HORRIBLE. I’m sorry I’m not one to leave bad reviews but this alone is extremely awful. Had quite a lot of other issues but this is what is really hard for me to come to terms with. Parking worst than downtown by far. I can’t even throw on a jacket & run to my car (for idk whatever reason) right now it’s to get the change of address form in my car but that’s not the point. I can’t even throw on some shoes & run to my car cuz I’m parked 3 blocks away! Awful awful awful. View? beautiful. love the mountains & location but idk guys. Y’all need to step it up. This is NOT COOL.

Overall the property and staff are great, but with the influx of people moving to CO I think they are a bit swamped which unfortunately caused a big issue at my expense. I’ll briefly explain — Upon signing the lease, I was asked to supply my Xcel Energy account number to the leasing office so that they may transfer it to AUM, the utility company Trinity Properties goes through. First month’s bill through AUM was fine. The following month seemed a bit higher but was told the fee for the account transfer would appear on it, so I wrote it off. The 3^rd month was even higher than the previous, so I looked into it. After a conversation with the leasing office contacted AUM directly, they said to speak to property management it was explained that AUM was generating a bill because I don’t have an Xcel account open in my name for the address, and its so high because its charging me an additional $ 50 each month that I don’t have the Xcel account set up. Needless to say I was both angry and confused since I was completely misinformed while signing the lease. We’ll see how this month goes now that I reopened my Xcel account, I have yet to find out if I’ll get any sort of reimbursement for those charges and fees.
I’d like to just mention some odd things, some odd enough to be a negative:
Dining Room Living Room — Light switches seem backwards to me Dining room on the right, should be right switch but is actually left, vise versa.
2^nd Bedroom — DEFINITELY wired incorrectly. Maintenance assured me its correct and just weird but I’m very certain that the light switch shouldn’t be wired to the ceiling light AND the wall outlet. If a ceiling light is present, the switch is for that. If not, its for the wall outlet so you can plug in a lamp. NOT both.
Master Bedroom Closet Bathroom — There’s 2 lights in the closet area where the sink is toilet and shower in a small room next to it and one of them is, apparently, a heat lamp. I thought it was just flickering on and off and needed to be changed, but I was informed that once it hits a certain temp it automatically shuts off. Pretty annoying when trying to use it as an actual light, very glad there is another one.
Valet Trash Service — If you’re reading this thinking «…what?» then you aren’t alone. Basically, you put your trash outside your door every day, in the supplied and marked trash bin, and someone comes by and takes it out for you. Why am I mentioning this? First off, I think its a ridiculous service altogether. But the real issue is that it costs you $ 25 month on your rent and you CANNOT opt out of it. I take my trash out myself like any regular able-​bodied person, so I’m basically just handing them $ 25 for literally nothing. I will say that the staff said to me they are working on making that optional… who knows when that will be.
Other than that, so far its been great living here. Parking will probably be an issue in a few months as more move in, for now its fine. Occasionally I can hear my neighbors when its quiet, nothing intrusive or distracting by any means, neighborhood is quiet in general. Appliances are all new, everything looks nice and matches. Nice consistent trim and grey walls instead of standard white off-​white. Shame I couldn’t rate some categories higher, this place is nice but the things I mentioned above are just too big of issues to overlook. The property recently underwent a merger — Ascend, Elevate, and one other complex nearby are all now the same company 3 properties, Trinity so I understand growing pains but some things are just unacceptable, namely the Xcel situation. Perhaps when things settle down and they get some more staff they can work out these issues.

I have lived at this property for about 4 years now. I’ve lived in both the 2 bedroom/​2 bath apartment and my current one which is a one bedroom with a den. The old ownership was through Fairfield which wasn’t that bad of a company and had really low deposit fees and maintenance didn’t take to long to fulfill work orders. But since Trinity properties has taken over, there is now what looks like hell on earth throughout the property. We are now charged a $ 25 monthly valet trash fee that we didn’t have a choice about, rent has escalated out of control for both sides of the property (I live in what’s now Ascend at Red Rocks– Not elevate at red rocks), and parking is HORRIBLE!!! There’s to many people living here and not enough parking spaces. The parking lot is also falling apart. The wall barriers have come apart and most of the boulder rocks used for the wall are just laying all over the place and the stones used for the parking lot are shattered and busted.
Everything is a complete mess here. Construction started on the exterior of the buildings several months ago but something appears to have gone wrong because only parts of the buildings– maybe 15% of them have new siding which was just placed over the old one while other’s are partially done and some porches have 2×4’s holding up the top of the porch so it doesn’t cave in because they never came back to replace the wood. They stopped doing the siding randomly one day and that was several months ago. Then there’s an apartment at the top of the hill that has by far the worst color paint job I’ve ever seen in my life. Half of the building is pea green mixed with vomit and the other is an orange color that gives you a headache just looking at it. The leasing office assured me that it was just the property «testing» out the colors but apparently have forgotten about finishing anything to do with the outside of the buildings. They have also done the worst paint job on the interior walls like the hallway, our front doors, and the stairways and the walls look like their bleeding.
My biggest issue with this is that no one notified us that they were painting everything inside and that we wouldn’t be able to get in and out of our apartment for several days. Or telling us what is going on with the exterior buildings or letting us know about the pool area. I got locked in by a ladder and paint buckets one morning at 6am and was not pleased to have to knock everything over to get out of my own apartment and then found out I was blocked in by one of the construction vehicles too. The leasing office has failed to notify any residents of what’s going on with the renovations and everything looks horrible. I’m so disappointed in how money was spent to «fix» things when the place is falling apart faster than its being «fixed». After they did my siding I went out and noticed nails laying all over the rocks so I spent a good 2 hours raking through the rocks under my half porch (garden level doesn’t really have a porch) pulling out 4 inch nails, screws, rusted pieces of metal, and burned wood from when the building had caught fire a few years ago. I couldn’t believe how negligent the workers were and somehow thought it was ok just to throw the old nails on the ground and leave a god awful mess where people walk their dogs everyday. The only thing that looks decent is the work they did to the pools fencing and the new furniture but they only opened the pool last week.
My apartment itself is also a very sad sight. I’m paying almost as much as those in newly renovated apartments and mine is pretty much falling apart. None of my windows lock and I live on the garden level. The dishwasher has flooded my kitchen several times, my light switches are really screwed up, there was massive nicotine stains all over my blinds and walls when I moved in, and everything is from the 70’s. At some point someone thought it would be a good idea to paint my bathtub and counter top with actually paint so over time its cracked and shows multiple colors. My upstairs neighbor is not a very big guy at all but sounds like an elephant when he walks around and a lot of my neighbors are always drunk and playing loud music during the weekends which can get a little annoying especially with the cigarette smoke.
I know that I’ve now written probably an essay. I want people to understand that this is really not the best place to live anymore. What you see isn’t what you get. They’ve really screwed up on what was supposed to be improvements and renovations. Instead of spending money wisely on things the place really needed they spent it on things that didn’t really need to be replaced. And that instead of doing each building at a time i.e. exterior siding, inside paint, replace inside carpet, ect. they went from on building to another random one. So each building is only 15−20% completed and all work has stopped so we’re all stuck with painted 30 year old carpet outside our apartment door in the hallway