Archstone Wheaton Station

I am new to the community and I absolutely love it here so far! I am baffled by the negative comments, because for me the community is everything that I could want. I’m thinking that the differences in opinion are due to the fact that I moved in at a really good time vs. what it used to be. Gables is the current management company and so far I am really impressed. From the time that I applied back in July till the time I moved in in September a lot of aesthetic changes have been made to the community and it’s looking pretty terrific. For the past 10 years I have lived in a house, so I am accustomed to having more than one floor to roam around on. The Flats offers two level loft units, which is a rarity in this area, and is what drew me to the place. I have a two bedroom loft unit and I couldn’t be happier with it. Good amount of space, appealing design and everything is new. Plus, the metro station is right at the bottom of my staircase exiting the building. So far it seems to be pretty quiet. Vivian in the rental awesome was excellent with getting me moved in and situated! She even went the extra mile and called me to see if I wanted to keep the accent wall painted that the previous renter had done. The accent wall would have been a fortune to paint considering that the ceilings are pretty high, so I really appreciated her asking me if I wanted it.

The Flats At Wheaton Station has a new management company now, Gables Residential. Everything has been renovated and it looks amazing! There is also a new concierge and security system to the building which prohibits kids from playing in the lobby, gym and clubroom!

My experience with the leasing office (central and onsite) was abysmal. I’ve never had to hunt down a leasing associate to take my money. IF thats how they treat new applicants aka NEW $$$$ I can only imagine how they treat older tenants in need of repairs.
The office was unresponsive and unavailable for the better part of a DAY.
Out of curiosity I called throughout the day to see what their response times were like. I never got through and left several messages. Then I called their central leasing office, and this 3^rd party rep couldn’t tell me JACK about the property (not even when I should expect a callback from their onsite leasing agents) but asked me if I wanted an appointment to view the property.
Why would I make an appointment with people who can’t even be present in the office to answer phones/​questions? Seriously— I can make an appt to go see it and put in an application — but there is no one available to answer the phones in the on premise leasing office ALL DAY???
When I finally did get through it was based on persistence alone. I really was just curious as to whether or not this leasing office ever had employees IN the office. So after a whole day of calling, leaving messages, and not one reply from them — I finally got through to someone.
The person I talked to was very pleasant, but the fact that I had to jump through SO MANY hoops for the opportunity to GIVE her my money was really unacceptable.
I’m just gonna hightail it over to those leasing agents who actually bothered to reply to my inquiries, as opposed to the one I had to phone stalk (just to figure out whether the utilities were metered by unit — Seriously it took a whole day to track down someone who could give an answer to that simple question).
I’m guessing this has something to do with the fact that they’ve only got 3 people working the onsite office (according to their «central» office aka 3^rd party rep), which means they are woefully understaffed. But that seems to be the practice with their management company.
They outsource a lot of services from their leasing office phone lines to property repairs to utilities — and their motto seems to be «Outsource every single service possible that way WE don’t have to ensure the quality of ANY of them.»
So far from my 1 day experience with The Flats — the overall experience fell FLAT on its face.
2 stars seems a bit inflated and I’d be interested in seeing what algorithm Unilocal uses that even got it that high.

I would «like» all 1 – 2 star reviews down below if I could. The Flats At Wheaton suck! We’ve been living here for 1 year and this annoying fire alarm goes off every week (during the night or in the early morning). And usually it goes of for half an hour at a time. I can’t believe nobody can fix this stupid alarm!!! I really feel sorry about families with little children and pets who have to go through this torture every time…

I have lived here for 3 years. In 2013 the building was sold twice. Each time the property declines. Borger management is the worst. They use pen and paper to track and have residents sign for packages. There have been at least 2 crimes (that I’m aware of) that have been committed in the building. The common areas are dirty, there is trash thrown around the place. There is no security. On ½/​14 Residents received a letter from the property manager stating that another crime had been committed on the premises and to be sure to lock your doors. The apartments are out dated with very little closet space. The hall ways are dirty which tracks dirt into your apartment. Borger wants to charge rental prices similar to the 2 new buildings across the street. The amenities are lacking — the resident’s computer room closes at 9pm there is no printer, the fax machine you have to jerry-​rig to get it to work. You can hear your neighbors thru the walls and floors. The weight room is missing pins for the weights therefore most of the weight machines don’t work. The flat panel TV was stolen from the entertainment room. So Borger cut the hours of use for the Entertainment room from ²⁴⁄₇ to 9am to 9pm. Great way to solve that problem punish the residents who pay high rent for Borger’s lack of management.
My recommendation is move to one of the newer properties in the area for the same price with security, a conceirge, ²⁴⁄₇ entertainment rooms, clean and safe.

You are lucky to have a ²⁄₁₂ star rating your service if you can call it that is terrible. The way you speak to tenants who by the way pay for your check is absurd. 1^st thing be trained on manners 2^nd thing be trained on manners again. 3^rd be available. You are not prison guards, you are there to help us, the people with the money. I only wish I could give a lower rating !

I have lived here for the past 8 months and have mostly had a very positive experience. The management has changed hands again, so I don’t have much feedback on how well they will maintain the property or interact with customers.
The previous staff is generally courteous, and helped us work out a financial issue over the summer (they were not legally obligated to do so, so I appreciated that).
The building is kind of weird in that it is a hybrid between a closed building and a garden style apartment. There are doors protecting the halls from the outside somewhat, but it is not a closed building. This can cause your energy prices to go up — the maintenance staff worked with us to help seal our front door better to save on heating/​cooling.
The finishes inside the apartment are not high end, but they are decent. The closet space is large, the appliances work fine, and there is a good amount of counter space and storage.
We have an apartment overlooking the pool with a balcony. It is pretty nice, but the light from the pool is quite bright. We also have a top floor unit. We have had very little problems with noise. People on lower levels have complained about noise from above. We only hear people in the hall sometimes. You might have more problems with noise if you live near a door (by the stairs, garage, garbage room, or hall way door) because they are frequently used and can make a lot of noise when closing. It might also be a problem to live by the garbage room. The room isn’t emptied enough and begins to smell when it gets close to time for them to pick up the garbage. If I had one major problem with the apartment it is that they didn’t replace the carpet before we moved in and it shows.
In general, I have liked living here and I think it is a pretty good value. This is particularly true if you don’t have a car or pet — we pay almost $ 250 a month more on our rent in order to have a cat and two cars. Otherwise, I would recommend this to anyone looking to live right on the metro (a 3 minute walk); within walking distance of shopping, dining, and a 24 hour Safeway; and still pay under $ 1500.

I rented here for six months while I looked for a home to purchase. The common areas are dirty and scuffed up. For instance, the couches in the party room are stained. The concierge hours are way too short and this place does not have a loading dock for move-​in. In addition, I don’t feel that there are enough elevators for the building, so you may not want to live on a higher floor (poorly designed). And lastly, due to the short concierge hours, I called and tried to get some packages placed in a more secure area that I could access after hours. Instead, they told me they would place them outside the door of the rental office. Well, someone stole them. They supposedly have cameras in the area, but they weren’t facing in the right direction. Then, the staff did not even volunteer to do a partial reimbursement for my lost goods. When I said that I was going to file a police report, they didn’t even bat an eye.

I toured this place when I found an advertisement for a one bedroom loft on Craigslist for $ 1500. I’m a DC-​dweller so I figured I’d go see what the fuss was about in Silver Spring. When my GPS directed me to WHEATON I nearly didn’t get out of the car, but I did with a hopeful song in my heart and a doubtful mind. That hopeful song was wiped from memory when I entered the building.
The lobby is small and pathetic. There were children running around, unchaperoned. (eeek!). The clubhouse was full of teenaged thugs, as was the gym. Then there is the walk to the actual unit. Reader, I do not embellish here — there is a wall missing. The building advertises itself as «garden style.» When I pulled up to a high rise building I thought there must have been some mistake. Until I got to this particular hallway, at the intersection of the elevator and the peek-​a-​boo wall cutout that opened into a neighboring garage. They can call it garden style, I call it tacky and say someone didn’t order enough bricks to finish the wall.
Or they’d rather save on electricity and force renters to heat the hallways. I digress.
After leaving the freezing open air hallway, and taking the elevator up a few levels, I was tormented with an additional flight of stairs that I had to walk up. Here I stopped, confused, wondering why the elevator dropped me off at a landing and I had to walk up stairs. But then I remembered the unfinished peek-​a-​boo wall and kept going. Up the stairs into dated appliances, cheap finishing, and even worse carpet. I felt bad for the loft, it could have been nice. The space was good and maybe if the building design had been more intelligent I would have had more kind things to say.

It’s 9÷30÷12 at 3am in the morning and the fire alarm has been going off for the last 30 minutes for the second time this month. Since I am awake I thought I would write a review. Only move here if you want to pay extremely high rent and be awakened several times each month by the fire alarm going off at 3am in the morning. I now keep ear plugs on my beside table for these monthly events. Most of the residents including my self don’t bother to get up or go outside. I just roll over and put my ear plugs in and shut my bedroom door and attempt to go back to sleep. I have contacted management several times about the fire alarms, however, Management will not do anything about the fire alarms going off. They will, however, provide you with a long list of excuses as to why they keep going off, but again they will not do anything about it. And the fire alarms ring for at least a half hour cause the fire dept has to come and see if there is a fire. There are several new apt buildings being built in the area therefore I will be moving out of here when my lease expires.

Yes, the rent is a little high, but so far, we think it is totally worth it! I really cannot speak any higher of Yukela in the leasing office. She was pleasant and funny on the phone (which NEVER happens, trust me, we called A LOT of complexes and they were all rude) and met us with a big smile and really showed that she cared that we needed a place fast! She showed us 2 units and explained everything very throughly as well having an answer for every question we asked.
We told her that we had one more appointment at another location and we would call her ASAP. She never put pressure on us and wished us luck. The moment we looked at the other location, I knew that we needed to go right back to Yukela. I called her from the car and when we arrived, she had all of the paperwork ready and within minutes we had our beautiful apartment. Keep in mind that this was Friday at 5:30pm and the office closes at 6pm. We moved in the next morning at 9am!
The amenities are fantastic: Gym (24 hours), Pool (open from Memorial Day to Labor Day), Business Center (24 hours) and a beautiful community room with a small kitchen and bathroom that you can reserve for private parties! I LOVE THIS PLACE!

Leasing office staff is great. Building is sort of falling apart, but they are doing their best to fix it. I think for the value, I enjoy living here. Gym is decent, pool is beautiful and well kept.