Albion Evanston

We have an east-facing apartment, and get plenty of natural light, especially in the morning (great for waking up!) Some greenhouse effect during the day, but keeping the windows open is a great option for the fall, and in the summer the AC is perfectly effective.

AT&T 1Gb symmetric Fiber internet available - great for me working from home.

Not a lot of excess noise (combo of thick concrete floors / ceilings and reasonable neighbors).

Kitchen sink is nice and large, which makes washing dishes easy, but when the kitchen drawers are sticky when fully loaded, so they don't close properly when bumped with your hip.

Closets are a little small; the primary suite walk-through closet space is taken up by built-in wall organizers and only has one bar high enough to hang dresses, and that bar is only ~2ft long.

The "freight elevator" is only a foot or two wider than a normal elevator, and has the same size door as a normal elevator, so it's not easy (or even possible in some cases) to make use of the additional space for large furniture.

Really enjoyed my experience. Lots of Kellogg folks. Definitely the nicest apartment building in terms of finishes / amenities. The biggest downside of the building is management - most people would agree that the property management isn't the most friendly or competent. This is common for all buildings in Evanston, so not as glaring of a drawback

Great place to be

Building is all flash no bang

Overall a solid new building. Most of the amenities, like the pool and gym are great. Annoying there is no disposal

The apartment itself is nice - since the building was brand new when we moved in, all the appliances work, it's clean, etc. I will say that management has been consistently poor with very high turnover throughout our time here. It seems like the vast majority of the leasing / management staff (with the exception of emergency maintenance and janitorial, who are both fantastic) are very inexperienced and do not provide the level of service expected for "premium" rent prices. We've had several instances where they will delay responses to emails for critical matters, where building security is breached and there is no real reaction other than to reinstall glass doors, where people's apartments have flooded and emergency maintenance couldn't be contacted during off-hours. There is also a lot of "preventative" maintenance and such where they want to enter our apartment but don't give us sufficient warning / attempt to come on holidays, don't follow up on rescheduled appointments, etc.

Only real gripe about the building is the smoke detectors are SUPER sensitive and placed within the kitchen, so if you ever want to put your oven above 400 or sear something on the stove, you can guarantee the smoke detector will go off.

The interior of the apartment building is very lovely with large windows, good appliances, and much larger layouts than many other apartments in Evanston. Albion is very centrally located and just a short walk to Target, Whole Foods, and the best of downtown Evanston. The train runs right next to the building and you can hear it (even with the windows closed) but it hasn't been disruptive. The building is not as secure as I would like, but it hasn't been the end of the world. As with living in any big city, you need to be vigilant. The biggest problem is the management team - it feels like they are either not experienced with running a building or negligent. They are slow to respond to resident issues and you will get a different answer depending on which member of the staff you ask.

Management at Albion is super helpful!

The apartment itself is very new with good value for money. There are minor issues with the units at times due to how new the building is (this is very common for newly-opened buildings). The major issue my wife and I have with the complex is their marketing about the apartment being a pet-friendly space. The apartment advertises a "dog-run", "pet pantry", etc. and despite numerous complaints from residents - none of those amenities actually exist. After complaining, the apartment let us know there was a "dog relief area" outside of the apartment that we could use for our pet, but that was also misleading as they have now installed a massive art piece, taking away the only pet amenity (if you can call it that) that they have.

The last thing I'll say is that as a whole, management is not responsive. At all. It took 5 months to get a lease once we had agreed that we wanted to lock in an apartment. After talking to friends, this was extremely consistent across the board.

I feel Albion is a great fit for someone starting Kellogg: 1) There are a lot of other Kellogg students who live in the building, 2) The building itself is new, so it has a very modern/chic feel to it, and 3) It's priced comparatively to the other Evanston Kellogg buildings (e.g., E2), despite the rooms being slightly larger and nice (in my opinion).

The one downside is it's slightly further away from the Hub compared to other buildings (i.e., a 25-minutes walk compared to a 20 minute one).