Pavilions at Pantano Apartment Homes

I’ve been here quite a few times now and quite honestly if I moved to Tucson this would be a good choice to try as far as apartments go.
UPS:
The grounds are well kept
Friendly tenants I’ve met
Pools are great
fitness center just the right size
laundry facilities conveniently located
Elevators make it easy to transport larger heavy items
DOWNS:
small bathroom in the 1 bedroom.
distant smell of smoke ewww! not sure if it’s lingering in carpets
it’s really a nice tranquil place per my experience here.

I hope that anyone who chooses to take interest in this apartment complex will read and take my review into consideration first. This is a long and detailed review but I will give a short summary first. Just for comparison, I am an educated 24 year old female who lived in this complex for 14 months.
I moved to Tucson in September 2012 and needed to find an affordable but obviously nice apartment to live in. I had just graduated college and moved here from the east coast. After looking at several places, I chose to go with Pavilions at Pantano. The price was right, the «model apartment» was gorgeous and it had pretty much everything I was looking for in an apartment and complex. While exploring the community I had requested a first floor apartment OR an apartment located in one of the buildings with an elevator.
On the day I was to get my keys, I am reading the documentation and see that I was assigned a second-​story apartment in a building with NO elevator. Upon my questioning, the woman replied there were none available fitting my request. But no one bothered to tell me that until I was signing the lease!
I reluctantly moved in anyways. And here is the summary of my stay at Pavilions at Pantano. Please read further for more detail.
SUMMARY:
1. Community — Completely unsafe. A mixed crowd of drug dealers, drunken teens and individuals representing most people’s ideas of gang members. Although the complex offers nice things such as pools and a playground and whatnot, they are almost unusable due to fearing for your life. I couldn’t even walk my dog without being harassed.
2. Cost — Great. Perfectly affordable. But with that, comes the riff-​raff mentioned above! Was the price worth the risk of my safety? NOPE. Do yourself a favor and look elsewhere.
3. Staff — Very nice, but very incompetent! After giving me the wrong apartment, I also got charged for not giving «60 days notice» ($ 135) when I had ALREADY done so in the office and they charged me a FULL CLEANING fee ($ 90) when I left my apartment spotless.
4. Noise — ABSOLUTELY ridiculous. I made several complaints because I couldn’t sleep due to what sounded like wrestling matches going on above me or parties in the courtyard all night long.
5. Safe for Children? 100% NO!!! My best friend described this complex as a «scary» place. And she didn’t even live there! Kids once flagged me down in fear of a fight in the courtyard. I had to call the police about it. (And cops are here at least once a week).
6. Pet friendly? — Yes, definitely. But if you have a dog like I did, going outside to walk it is a scary experience.
In short, this was the worst experience I’ve ever had living in an apartment… And I lived in the not-​so-​nice neighborhoods of Philadelphia for five years on a college budget!
END SUMMARY — Keep reading for the full story!
Things were great with the apartment when I first moved in. It was cozy, perfect size for me and affordable. I work a lot, so I didn’t do much socializing with the others in the community but the more time I spent living here, the more it became clear that I definitely SHOULD NOT socialize with them.
The other people living in this community make living here scary! I guess the cheap rent is to blame here. There is a mixture of young families with kids (I WOULD NEVER LIVE HERE IF I HAD KIDS), older couples who are sweet, quiet and keep to themselves, and a LOAD of individuals who would perfectly represent my description of gang members. I have a dog, so I would often walk her outside when I got home from work and literally dread doing so. If it wasn’t screaming children running up to me, it was one of the strung out individuals harassing me and asking «where my man was at.» I had to deal with this DAILY. Now, some people were very nice who lived in this place and I really liked them. But it did not outweigh the negativity of the disrespectful individuals who significantly outnumbered the nice ones.
ALL NIGHT LONG there are parties, teens screaming and being drunk, cops being called, etc. On one occassion I got home from work and pulled into the parking lot and two kids flagged down my car pleading for help because there was a huge fight in the courtyard and someone had a baseball bat. I watched over the kids and called the police. I don’t know how many noise complaints I had to make. I wake up early and go to work every day and lost countless amounts of sleep due to the noise that goes on here.
It seriously blows my mind that people would raise a family in this complex. My downstairs neighbor was an active drug dealer for at least half of my stay in this complex. I would never have my friends over due to fear of endangering them. One of my girlfriends helped me move out (what a glorious day) and she could only describe the place as «scary.» And it truly was.