Highland Ridge Apartments

This is definitely not a luxury apartment complex. It isn’t awful but it is definitely way overpriced for what you get. The apartments themselves are just okay but were cheaply «updated» and inferior to other luxury apartments I’ve visited. They do have washer/​dryer in unit but that is fairly standard these days anyway and should certainly come with a «luxury» apartment.
A few major things: there are frequently smells in the main entrance and hallways that could be eliminated with better cleaning and/​or air fresheners.
The rest of the building is sub-​par in the sense that you’ll find dirty stairwells, dirty walls and things looking overall run-​down. It was kind of embarrassing to let anyone in any door except the main door that faced the pool.
Again, not a terrible place to live but this is for sure not a luxury apartment complex, like they charge for living there. There is a new property manager every 9 – 12 months and they treat the tenants as though they can’t be bothered to help. Not what you’d expect when you’re paying the money you do to live there.
The other residents are… interesting. Not a lot of working professionals like you would think. It seems a lot of people stay home during the day and hang out, out front or back smoking.
When my mom came to visit she asked if it was a government subsidized apartment… sigh, again, NOT a luxury building.
The surrounding area has very little to offer. Very run-​down and scary apartments just a few blocks down West 7^th (Sibley Manor) and the world’s grossest smelling grocery store, Coopers, is the closest store (which is next to the dollar store, so again, no options for quick shopping).
If you’re going to spend the money on a luxury apartment, don’t do it here. It’s not truly a luxury apartment in any sense of the word.
Another HUGE issue that I experienced and heard from from my neighbors is the heat/​air conditioning situation. While they advertise that they pay for the AC/​Heat, that comes with a big caveat:
It’s centralized so they control when they turn it off/​on. You can only have one (heat or AC) on at a time If it’s below 70, they don’t turn the AC on. You may think that could be okay with opening windows etc however, heat rises and there is NOT good air flow from windows in the units so even though it isn’t 90 degrees, it’s HOT in the apartment. Then you have the times of year where it’s cool at night and warm during the day — their solution for those days? Turn everything off all together so you have NO access to AC or to heat. Not a good option.
Also, because they «pay» for AC/​Heat, it’s essentially bundled into the high rent but they don’t really provide the AC/​heat at all times! You also pay for the energy/​AC that your apartment system kicks out so it’s not truly covered. My xcel bill was ridiculously high b/​c I left my AC on under the impression they paid for it… not true. It’s a big loop hole that helps them come out ahead while the residents are uncomfortable at home. I had my best friend here in June and they had the AC off because it «wasn’t hot enough» and we were sweating just hanging out inside.
The thing I keep coming back to is the «luxury» piece — none of these things make the apartment «unlivable» but they certainly disqualify the building as a luxury apartment complex.

It’s not a bad place to live. There are some good things — front office staff and maintenance guys are very polite, for example. There are small washers and dryers in all apartments (I believe) which is important.
The rent seems high for what it is, but that is just my opinion. For example, they let dogs live here and the hallways down to outdoors have such a strong wet dog smell that I would steer house guests in through the main door, even though that means a five minute walk back to my apartment, because I’m embarrassed by the nasty smelling stairways. I think they recently steam cleaned the carpets too, after making announcements about dogs crapping in the hallways. The steam cleaning made it worse (imagine wet dog smell, crap, and urine in the carpets, and then mold because they didn’t dry the carpets). It’s truly nauseating, and it’s unfortunate that every time I go out and come home, I pass through that nasty environment… it puts me in a bad mood.
Another big problem is heating and cooling. It’s centralized which means they control when it’s turned on or off, and you can only have one on at a time in that it takes up to three days to cycle through. You have On/​Off in your apartment, but only if the heat or AC is actually on for the buildings. That’s fine, with a few big exceptions:
Current «big exception» — at the end of September, they shut off the AC. They said this was because it was cool at night. (As I said, we can turn it off in our apartment, if we think it’s too cold, but they said this is why they turned it off.) What I’m not happy with is that they did not turn the heat on either for those allegedly cool nights. So, for the past week or so they have had neither the heat nor the AC on, so we are cold at night and hot in the day time. I can accept that we can only have access to one or the other, to heat or to AC, but to turn them both off isn’t cool.
See, it is «included» in our high rent, so this is a cost-​savings to the company at the expense of our comfort at home. It’s 80 degrees right now in my living room per the thermostat, as it has been for days, and I cannot turn the AC on to cool off. I open the windows, but people smoke under the balconies so the apartment gets their smoke in it, and so opening windows isn’t usually a good fix. Would you have be too hot, with no AC to turn on, or cool with a breeze, but have cigarette smoke inside all the time?
Tonight it will be cold out, and I will have no heat either. Not cool, no pun intended. We had the converse experience at the start of summer, when they shut the heat off for the season and it was really cold for a while. We had to buy more blankets and everything, but the office said that it takes three days to cycle from AC to heat or back, and that the cold spell was expected to end before that could happen. They also don’t allow space heaters, so this was pretty unpleasant to pay such a high rent and be so cold at home. At the moment, it’s October and hot, but the AC is off along with the heat that is still off. It’s a bad deal.
See, I could learn to accept the thing about only being able to have one thing on in the system at a time, either heat or AC. However, this means there should never be *neither* just to save a few bucks when our rent is so high. Turning off the AC early and yet not turning on the heat, I find insulting.
It’s things like this that make me chuckle a bit when I see the «luxury apartments» signs. Is it a bad place to live? Not really. People are mostly quiet, and you can almost always get a parking spot off-​street, although you might have a walk to get back to your end of the property. It’s still good to have a parking lot. And the office staff and maintenance people are always polite, they really are. But it’s expensive for what it is, smelly, and sometimes at a temperature that you cannot heat or cool on your own.