Lenox on the park in East Orange

[Qutypie]

I was one of the first tenants to move into 40 Lenox Ave. It was often so cold during the winter. Heat came on at odd times during the day and rarely at night. There were many times when the heat never came on. It was so cold. I had to purchase portable heaters just to keep one room warm. My electric bill skyrocketed because of this. There were so many staff & super changes. The billing for rent was always wrong & took forever to get fixed, plus they kept changing billing companies. I had to make numerous requests in writing & numerous phone calls to get repairs fixed. Yes I saw a couple of mice, but not an infestation. I put down mouse traps. What I hated seeing was a lot of centipedes. Yuck! Yes, there is a halfway house across the street which the owner conveniently left out when initially showing the apt and talking about the neighborhood. However, the halfway house appears to be managed well and there was never any problems when I lived there. The laundry area was in the basement where it was dark and dangerous. The washers and dryers were constantly broken. About 90% of the original tenants moved out before the first year. The owner is very cheap, rude and uncaring. He just wants the rent money. Honestly, he really does.

Initially, when I rented the apartment, I signed a lease prior to the apt being completely finished with the renovations. I was blindsided. The owners showed me a beautiful model and then promised me that my renovated apt was going to look like the model. Well my apt never ended up looking like the model. The closet & bathroom doors were cracked and worn. There were no clothing rods in any of the closets although I asked for them & never got them. The paint job receded after a month and all the cracks, dings and dents in the walls started to show. It was obvious that the walls were never sanded down and re-painted. They just threw paint over the old paint. The hardwood floors were not new. They looked like they were sanded down then shellacked. The marble tile on the bathroom floor started to crack and rise. The apt windows were extremely drafty.

The apts are spacious and have so much potential, but, it quickly became obvious that this was a quick fix construction, slyly advertised as 'luxury' apts but there was nothing luxurious about them. The facade of the building is nice, but it is exactly that...a facade. Eventually since so many people moved the owners started renting to people of a less than professional caliber. I liked living there but could not continue to pay the amount of money I was paying for rent & parking and not get my concerns addressed. I lived there from Sept 2008 to Sept 2010.

Although my review may sound sad there were numerous other tenants who told me horror stories about the condition of their Lenox Ave apts. These people have since moved from the building. Good Luck.

[Jjohnson1239]

I've been living in east orange for some years now, and I can really say that it's changed dramatically since the mayor started cleaning up the area. The whole city is working hard to make this a great place again and I can safely say that I feel comfortable walking around alone, or sending my children out to walk through the town.

Lenox on the Park is also a beautiful set of buildings that are well maintained and I think they're really trying to bring back a sense of the classic beauty that was once what East Orange was filled with. I'm happy living here and I think people should really judge the city by what it is NOW, not by what it used to be.

[Gemini365i]

hmmmm really? I live in EO too. I visited the management office, in that house next to the Lenox buildings. I took my father to fill out an app for an apartment, that was going for section 8, that they own.
I can actually tell you, I was not thrilled to see how the buildings looked. It's only 1 Building that looks decent. And that happens to be the building that they base all of their advertisements on.

JE