Island Drive*

Please just don’t live here- everything about it is horrible. The insulation sucks, so you will want to die in the summer. There are TONS of bugs that get in, and don’t even think about opening your windows to cool it down. Somehow even more bugs flood in. The office staff is a whole other can of worms I won’t dive into. Just trust me, this place isn’t worth living in. Rent another apartment or home in the area instead. Or take over my lease for me so I can get out.

This place is probably the worst housing experience I've ever had, and undoubtedly made living in Ann Arbor a negative experience by itself. The management is detached, does not perform routine cleaning and maintenance (the place is disgusting and this will NOT change- spiders everywhere, literally hundreds of dead bugs all over the interior), and went as far as to raise my rent despite saying they woulden't. When I tried to debate this, I got a "Too bad, pay it or we'll sue" treatment. It's just a really awful place. I would never live here under any circumstance. They coulden't pay me to live here. By all means, pay a tiny bit more and get a monumentally better experience anywhere else.

I wish I could give this place zero stars. I lived at I.D. Apartments and pretty much experienced everything that everyone in all of the negative reviews said I would. Not only are the apartments overpriced, they're outdated, the maintenance staff always does a poor job, the management is rude, impersonal, and there were several instances where the management and administrative staff actually relied on my sympathy regarding their own personal matters (way TMI...) when they weren't getting things done. In addition, I've been yelled at and hung up on by two admins at Frankel's HQ as well as including Mr. Frankel himself. Absolutely awful.... avoid avoid avoid. I would post some of the photos I took while living here, but I'd rather you not have nightmares. P.S. With their residents, the management casually incentivizes writing positive reviews online.

I am a dissertating PhD candidate in a humanities discipline at UM. My experience with Island Drive Apartments has been one of the most positive experiences in all of my seven years in Ann Arbor. First, the apartment itself. I am in a top-floor two-bedroom apartment. The apartment was clean when I received the keys, with new carpet in the living room, hallway, and both bedrooms, and with solid, dark lookalike hardwood floors in the dining room, kitchen, and bathroom. It is QUIET. I cannot stress this enough. As a PhD student with noise sensitivities, I was in an uphill battle to find QUIET housing, where I could focus on my work and sleep soundly at night. Island Drive is that. My apartment is also full of light during the day, with windows facing three directions! Marrie, Sarah, and the maintenance crew have been very attentive to all of my maintenance needs. The LOCATION is UNBEATABLE. Living without a car in Ann Arbor, NATURE is one of the things that I miss. Here, my backyard is literally the river and the river trail! How amazing! Argo park and the Arb are both 10-15 minutes’ walk away. Downtown and central campus are a 20-30 minutes’ walk. The #23 bus comes right to the entrance of the apartments, making it equally convenient to bus to the Central Campus Transit Center, in one direction, and to the Plymouth Road Kroger (a local supermarket), in the other direction. The UMich Blue Buses also stop right in front of the complex and the North/South Commuter Blue Buses are a 7 minutes’ walk towards the hospital. An unexpected but delightful surprise was that one local Korean and Asian foods store is just a 6 minutes’ WALK away. In car-centric America, where no grocery shopping can ever be conceived of without a car, to have a grocery store within a 6 minutes’ walk is in itself a luxury. In that same plaza, you also have Cottage Inn Pizza, a Korean food diner, and a party store. PET POLICY was another genuine surprise and relief. DOGS ARE NOT ALLOWED. Cats are welcome. I have yet to live through the winter here at Island Drive, but I feel confident that the office will be responsive to any maintenance issues that may arise. Also, with the buses coming right to the apartment entrance, I also feel confident that I will be able to stay warm as I go to and from campus. I am delighted and grateful that I get to live in this community. It is quiet, clean, beautiful, and replenishing.

I've found quite a few negative compounds on various sites and basically I think they are rather undeserved, and believe me, I would be shouting from the rooftops that it sucks. For someone who really did not want to move in here for a myriad of reasons, but all of them have either been outweighed our my mind completely changed. I did not want to live here because (1)it was on the N side of the river and as far as I was concerned, the "other side of the river" may as well have been the Dark Side of the Moon or the Land of Oz. (2) it was a large corporate owned complex, (3) it was built postwar in the 1950's, I grew up in Post-War 1950's levit town, where all the homes were built the same and in an assembly line. (4) I lived in Ann Arbor for the old, college-liberal-educated town and wanted to be closer to things. But after seeing it, and basically having no choice, I was actually happy I was forced to move here. We are hardly across the river, at the end of one street there is a bridge to the campus area and a number of buses from campus buses that pick you up for free right across the street and take you either to campus, or to one of the major bus stops by the hospital where you can pick up the 2 or the 4 (the main lines I use) every 8-15minutes. Two pick up directly in front, the #2 city bus, where you can get a transfer and a ride to the #4 every 15 min or the UofM Wall St bus that is right across the street that takes you to the edge of campus or to a bigger bus top to get on the 2. At the other end of the small street is the Broadway Bridge that leads right to Kerrytown or Dowmtown and an easy walk to many places. A block away there is a small strip mall with a liquor stores, a pizza place, a Korean grocery that has good stuff, a Indian restaurant and market, so there are more shopping options than basically anywhere else. As awesome as Ann Arbor is, there are really no markets or stores that sell much food so it is nearly impossible to get food to cook at home, but here it is quite close. Yeah, the place is Post-War and 1950's large complex. But the apartments are quite nice and we could afford a 2 bedroom here, nice kitchen, garbage disposal, new cabinets, hard wood in there and dining room. It is close to several parks right on the river, one of which you can rent canoes and knacks at, take you back. Corporate, but the people in the office are super ice, not a fan of owner company, but staff here keeps the place really nice,pool.