Pratt Beach Apartments & Stores

This building is exquisite. The landlady will accommodate reasonable requests. No drugs no drunkards. Apartments are actually studios and Galleries. Awesome euro bakery/​coffee right in th building.

Drug dealers and addicts hang in the back alley. Every night the maintenance guy and a loud, disgusting, older man sit on their balcony playing music at max volume sometimes until midnight. These guys laugh and yell, drink and talk so loud you cant sleep. Its the ghetto. Its disgusting and childish. They have no respect for anyone. My family has to stay up every night because these drunk, disrespectful idiots want to listen to stupid music. Are you sick or tired? Forget it, You cant sleep becausd they want to listen to music and drink. In their drunk idiot world no one else matters. All I have to say is avoid this crack infested, loud, filthy, crap hole of a building.

Pratt Beach Apartments
I saw a listing on Craig’s List for an apartment in the Pratt Beach Apts. building. All of the units are studios in various sizes. Nicely kept, but awkwardly arranged. No countertops or sensibly placed kitchen drawers. Large enuf to have a small table and chairs. The landlady began to put in Murphy beds to avoid bed bug problems.
My living experience:
Horrendous. Worst rental ever in over 30 years, caused by behavior of long term tenants and the landlady/​owner.
A disabled man and his crack whore did drugs, screaming incessantly. I entertained leaving till he was evicted for nonpayment of rent. He and another troubled tenant upstairs knocked on my door repeatedly asking to borrow money.
I ignored red flags that occurred during the rental process, largely because I was just plain tired of looking and was fresh out of the hospital.
First, the landlady/​owner is a very gruff woman who turned out to be a complete nutjob. I should have run the other way when she raised the agreed upon, advertised rent to $ 30 more, after confirming the rental amount while inside the unit. She raised the amount based upon the price of my last apartment, which was larger.
Secondly, she insisted upon a 2 year lease, which I was very uncomfortable with. Again, I could have tried to negotiate or refuse to rent there — but I was just too tired to deal with it.
Intrusiveness
From the start, the landlady would stop by the back door, tapping on the window any time she pleased. I’ve never lived in such an intrusive environment. It got so bad that I had to ask her to please call before coming by, whether it was with workmen for renovations or just to talk about something else. I worked from home as a consultant and experienced at least 2 or more interruptions a week. She said she would «comply» with my request — but the situation actually got worse. She then insisted that the workmen didn’t tell her when they needed access, which is complete BS.
If you live in the lower units, you can hear her gravely voice outside closed doors and windows, barking at the unfortunate people she gets to work for her. She started using a walkie talkie that made matters much worse, particularly during spring, summer and fall months.
The truth is that she enjoys disrupting people and does it every chance she gets. It would not surprise me if she had cameras installed in the units because that is how intrusive she is. I finally resorted to keeping the shades down on the back window and door so she couldn’t peer in — but she would tap on the windows anyway. This intrusive behavior continued right up until the moment I moved. It was particularly annoying because I was dealing with a worsened physical condition that I know was exacerbated by living there. Yet, she still insisted upon trying to waste my time with her nonsense such that I finally shouted at her to leave me alone.
The Area
Lake Michigan is one block away across Sheridan which is really nice. During the day I never experienced an issue with safety, but from time to time there seemed to be a somewhat ghetto element that would show up, particularly for holidays. By and large, most of the people seemed to be respectful.
Noise
The noise off Sheridan is absolutely terrible. It never stops. Even with the windows closed, you can hear the buses, cars and people ²⁴⁄₇. The heavy traffic begins around 4 am on weekdays — so it can be very hard to sleep. Even late at night, there are crazies walking the streets and shouting at all hours. There is a bar not too far away which could be part of the problem.
Safety
The area is very sketchy at night. One time during the day, a man followed me as I walked from Morse Market with a small cart filled with groceries. The Pratt and Clark McDonald’s experienced a shoot out during day time.
Transport
Sandwiched between the Loyola and Morse Red Line el stops. The 155 bus stops across Pratt such that you can hear the «155 Devon» announcement, even through closed windows. At Sheridan/​Pratt the 147 Congress bus goes express to Michigan Ave. from Foster on Lake Shore Drive. The 147 and 155 Kedzie buses don’t run very late at night.
There is no storage offered and the laundry room is disgusting. Looks just like an old woman’s basement, which is exactly what it is. Stuff strewn everywhere! Her clothes hanging all over the place, carts full of crap. And then she has the nerve to charge $ 2 to wash a load and another $ 2 to dry a load! Unreal!!!
Finally, the landlady/​owner shorted me $ 5 on the $ 50 cash key deposit fee she had demanded — without any notice until the day of the lease signing. If you are entertaining living in this building, I would advise that you take a unit that is as far away from hers as possible.

One time a few years ago a friend and I got mugged at gunpoint at Pratt Street Beach. It was at like 4 in the morning or something like that and I was wine-​drunk so everything was really dream-​like, but it was still pretty horrifying. After it happened (it seemed to go on for half an hour) and the dudes sped off, we ran to a pay phone on the beach to phone it in. While we were calling the police, this girl who had witnessed the whole thing called 9−1−1 from the adjacent pay phone and started talking about how she had tried to kill herself earlier in the evening because her stepfather had raped her. The worst part was the police came speeding up and picked us up and started driving us around trying to spot the car the getaway car and we left the suicidal girl standing on the beach, alone.