I rented an apartment there for my business travel in Milwaukee beginning in April 2011, and lasting through November 2011.  I had originally signed a 7 month lease, which for whatever reason, was the shortest lease I could sign with them.  I was looking for a place relatively close to the office and reasonably priced, as this was not my primary home but a better and more convenient alternative to hotels.  I wanted something safe, and decent. And a place with a garage.  I wanted one with on-site laundry facilities, ideally in the apartment themselves.  This I had to settle for facilities in my building.

I had hoped to stay in these apartments for the entire time I needed to be in Milwaukee for work.  But the experience was so terrible that I could not stay one day longer than my lease terms.

I guess I should start by saying that this is an old and quite dated apartment complex.  I guess I should have expected these things.  But I don’t think it is too much to ask that I be able to drink the water that comes from the tap.  I’m not a big tap water fan, but the water coming from the sink in Normandy Village is brown.  Not yellow, not cloudy, but brown.  Disgusting.  When I brought that up to a gal named Amber in the management office, she said that is to be expected in an apartment building that old.   So I learned today that apparently, if someone chooses to live in an older apartment building, having safe drinking water is not to be expected.

That is only the first, and probably most disgusting issue.  But there were many others.

One example… I can never open the mailbox.  The lock is a generic looking little lock and key that is so rusted out and destroyed that it takes me 10 minutes, literally, to manage to get the key in the lock and turned to open the mailbox.

Another is the garage, and pretty much every place inside the building that is not the actual apartment, has the worst musty smell.  It’s a combination of old, mildew, dirt and probably the strategically placed INDOOR DUMPSTERS that are in a room between where you walk from the underground parking lot to your apartment.  You quickly make a habit of holding your breath when making this walk.   Gotta love Normandy Village Apartments.

Also, you have to have a key – yes, a physical key – to get into the underground parking garage.  There is no garage door opener. Nothing of convenience.  When it is raining, snowing, whatever… you still have to roll down your window and reach out to use a key to open the garage door.  That kinda sorta defeats the purpose of having a garage if you are still going to be getting wet / cold / snowed on because that is the only way to open the door.    Gotta love Normandy Village Apartments.

For some reason, and this may be my biggest gripe about the entire place…  the entire complex seems to be the place where cell phone signals go to die.  I have Verizon, and I can’t use my cell phone in the apartment.  I’m pretty sure I could use Verizon to talk from the moon.  But not at Normandy Village Apartments.  I had to buy a MagicJack just to be able to make phone calls from this place.

The bathrooms are tiny and uncomfortable.  The heat and air conditioning is absurdly loud to the point of having to turn off the heat and AC if you want to watch TV.   There are no windows in my apartment either, only sliding glass doors from the kitchen and the bedroom – neither of which actually work without some magical trick that I can never figure out.   Also, I didn’t realize when I moved in, but there is no built in microwave oven.  This was a huge annoyance for me, and I guess I should have noticed that before signing a lease.   The cabinets in the kitchen are broken, and those that aren’t broken are terribly flimsy, and despite documenting that issue on my move in form back in March, it was never once taken care of before moving out.

The dishwasher is useless.  I can’t get anything clean, even the most basic dish comes out of the dishwasher and needs to be handwashed.  There is no point in even using the dishwasher.  Maybe this is because the dishes are being cleaned by the brown water, I don’t know.  Yea, I know, that is gross to even think about.  Gotta love Normandy Village Apartments.

The clubhouse and the gym are a complete joke as well.   The “workout center” is straight up from 1973, with rusty weights and outdated equipment.  But you should get a really good workout holding your breath as the workout room is one insanely terrible smelling place to be.  I paid to work out elsewhere instead of using this free facility, that is how much of a dump it is.

And to top it all off, when I went to put in my notice, at the end of September, I emailed my main contact at the office – a gal who said that if there was ever anything that I needed to just email her – to let her know that I would be looking for a new apartment and would be moving out on October 31. So I asked her if I needed to put that in writing for her or if the email would be good enough.  But when I didn’t hear back from her, I called the main office and learned that my main point if I should ever need anything was no longer with the company.   And on top of that, since I didn’t give notice by the end of September (which I tried to do), then I would now be locked into this dump of an apartment until November 30, as a 30 day notice apparently is actually 30 days and then the end of that month.  That is their “policy”, even though I contacted my “main point of contact” and tried to put in my notice in plenty of time.  But since she no longer works for them, that wasn’t good enough.  So yea, not only is it a dump, but the management team seems to be out to rip you off of every nickel they can get from you.   I asked if I could just pay the pro-rated amount of November that I would be using, even offering the 30 days from the date I talked to them on the phone, which would make it November 13 as a move out date.  They said no, that I would have to pay for the full November 30 date.

So I’m still debating what to do on this one.  They should acknowledge that I tried to give them notice, but I’m sure they won’t.  I’ll end up paying for the month of November.  But at the same time, because of their decision, I figured it would be a wise move to write this article and show any other prospective renters the truth about actually living in that dump.   Hopefully someone can learn from my article and not be stuck at a place you don’t like as I did.  So learn from my mistakes and avoid Normandy Village Apartments by all means possible.  You’ll thank me later.