73 East Lake

I had to give this apt a full 5 stars for many reasons. First off, my wife and i signed a new lease (2^nd year) after shopping a dozen condo’s & apts to rent in the city. We learned a lot and understand that there isn’t a perfect building, after all, city living isn’t easy; parking, noise, traffic, etc (challenges of city living anywhere). but we decided to continue our lease for many important reasons that other building did not or could not provide. to share a few, the management team is the best it’s ever been, they are knowledgeable, and very helpful with anything that goes on in the building, the manager definitely goes above and beyond. the maintenance team is also exceptional. it was important for us to live in a building with strong staff members and helpful people. we also learned it was one of the best buildings in regards to the price, unit size, amenities and location (hard to argue). overall, it’s a young building that will improve and be better and so far, its the best around. g’luck everyone.

From the outside this building looks uncared for. The trees on the street side are dead, tree grates are rusty, and one is broken. In the back cars are always parked alongside the building-​maybe they don’t need a fire lane! Or is that free quest parking? Homeless people hang out in the alley doorways, drink, and deface the building. It has gone unchecked so far. Classy.

I’m kinda surprised to see all the bad comments about this awesome building. This place have all you need. No need to be superficial because of coffee or other stuff you can have at home.
The staff is amazing and very responsive. Every time we need to change lights or fix something they come in an hour even when I mention that it’s not an emergency. The Doorman’s are very kind and friendly.
There is amazing view at the roof, and in the summer you have great spots to catch some sun in this freezing city.

Proud to say I was one of the first tenants to move to this building and I’ve never been happier both with the apt, the building, the management and especially the management and of course the welcoming staff.
I moved in for the location and because I loved the apt. Amenities are great — don’t get me wrong — but I work long hours and enjoy the gym over the weekend. Building manager Dawn Bishop is the reason I continue to stay. She is the nicest human being and treats you as such. If past tenants have found a reason to complain, my only assumption is that 1) they feel entitled and 2) they weren’t transparent with Dawn/​management about their intentions. Unfortunately, there are some that try to take advantage of all that the bldg. has to offer.
I’ve rented for years, most times in luxury buildings in NYC and Chicago. This bldg. is top notch. (While I’m at and if you are searching for the apt of your dreams, stay away from Chicago Apartment Finders. In one word — dishonest bunch!)
Happy to answer any questions via @shefibenhutta — that’s how much I love the place and appreciate how well this place is maintained.

My husband and I recently moved to Chicago from San Francisco and after starting with a list of about 20 apartments that we narrowed down to 10 to actually visit, we decided on 73 East Lake apartments. This community almost didn’t even make the list of apartments to view because of the poor Unilocal reviews and score but we’re so glad that we kept it on the list. I felt especially compelled to write a review because the poor reviews on here in no way represent the experience that we have had or the views of most of the neighbors we have talked to about their opinions of the building and leasing/​management team. I especially don’t understand the reviews specific to the staff that works here because they have been world-​class in my opinion
Our initial interaction with the leasing staff was with David, who was very thorough, able to answer all of our questions, friendly, and professional. After we left he was very quick to reply to emails and calls with additional questions we had to further narrow down our list. The application and lease-​signing process was quick and easy and David made coordinating our move in a piece of cake. After moving in, Jose in maintenance gave us a very detailed walk through of our apartment and how everything worked and some tips to get the most out of heating/​AC and our appliances. All of the front door staff is incredible! Andrew and Ron have been especially helpful as we have been moving in and getting settled. It’s so nice interacting with these guys on a daily basis.
I wanted to focus my review on the people and the process because the building and the units speak for themselves. Amenities are incredible, the units have fantastic finishings and attention to detail, the location is perfect if you want to live in the loop. Just take a tour and you’ll be sold on the building without needing to read any reviews on that aspect.
Let’s be realistic, there are a couple of things that would be different in a perfect world. There are obviously a few partiers that live in the building and don’t know how to take care of nice things so there have been a few times the rooftop lounge had been a disaster on Saturday or Sunday mornings. The upside is that it has been cleaned up and put back in shape very quickly and people responsible are assessed very steep cleaning fees so that should make them think twice before letting things get out of control again. The main gym is decent but could benefit from a little more equipment/weights…there is a core training room which is fantastic but it stays a little more crowded than the main workout room so I don’t go up there often. If a gym is important to you then the trade off is that there’s a Signature LA Fitness just a block or two away.
Overall, I’m highly impressed with the property and the people that work here and give it a full endorsement!

Moved out when the lease was up and it couldn’t have come soon enough. The other reviews are spot on — nice building, horribly managed. To be honest, the management is complete fraud. Constant changes in policies with no explanation other than «most of the time people just pay for this.» Broken elevators for 2+ months (takes 15 min. to get outside in the morning). Questionable (at best) charges for parking, maintenance, move in/​out fees. The lack of customer service and credibility for such a high-​end building is astonishing. With so many luxury apartments being built in and around the Loop/​River North area, I highly suggest looking elsewhere. For the money paid to live at 73 you’d expect much more and will certainly find it in numerous other buildings.

73 E Lake did not live up to my expectations. I was so excited to move in when I first moved to Chicago. On the surface, this place is great. But if I knew then what I’ve learned after living there for a year, I would never have signed that lease. And I’m honestly not a difficult person to please.
Management team and leasing agents are absolutely awful. And when I say awful, I mean they are legitimately mean people once you’re locked into a lease. If you want any sort of service from your building, don’t live here. And the elevators were a joke among all of us tenants. They’re broken 75% of the time.
This building is a money-​suck. They will charge you and charge you again for anything they can think of. I had a huge fee after I moved out, and the place was spotless. They literally made stuff up to take more money from me — and at that point I just paid them the $ 500 because I was so sick of it all and wanted it to be over. They make up rules, change the rules, and change them again. I was out of here ASAP, even tried to get out before my lease was up. I wish I would have read some reviews before I signed my lease. I wish someone would have warned me! Don’t fall for the first tour grandeur of all of the «great» amenities. They’re not worth it, not even close.
The only thing that was nice about this building were the doormen. They’re really great people and I enjoyed every single one! But even THEY couldn’t make up for all of the other downfalls.

I agree with the majority out there, everything is perfect about this building except for the leasing agents or the Management, however, doormen are awesome!
Management and the leasing agents slow, disengaged and not responsive when you need anything from them, which is maybe once in 6 months. It could be true they are like that to non-​caucasian tenants, since I am not and have faced it — both times I have reached out to them. I will move out just because of this behavior whenever my lease ends. If you are paying a high dollar for such a place, you deserve to be treated with some respect.

73 E Lake is absolutely beautiful. The amenities are out of this world.
We worked with Kara to get our move in stuff situated. She is so friendly and always very responsive. We appreciate your help!!!
My roommates and I are very excited to call such a wonderful building our new home.

Worst management team ever. Rude, irresponsible, make the rules and change the rules at anytime they want. Their bad attitude toward to non-​Caucasian/​non-​American tenant like me are the worst of the worst. They can tell you that they don’t want to talk to you because they can’t understand your English. Seriously they should go get some education about the fair housing.
This one star is for the doorman, they are very friendly and nice.
The building itself is very nice, great amenities. But the management team ruin everything. There are tons of great contemporary apartment building in Chicago, I regret to waste my money on this one.

I’m not really one to write reviews, but I noticed that a lot of the apartment communities I’m looking at in the state I’m relocating to have similar negative reviews to these listed here. Seeing a really nice place with a lot of negative reviews is really off putting and has turned me away from even considering some of the nicer buildings. I realized I’m probably passing up some awesome places because 1% of the tenants nitpick about things and felt compelled to write a review so someone in my situation wouldn’t pass up this building that I’ve called home for the last year.
I moved into the building for a few different reasons:
The location:
A short walk to the lake, shopping, or any of the awesome bars and restaurants. If you don’t feel like walking, grab an Über and you’ll be anywhere worthwhile in the city within minutes for a few bucks. It does get a little busy if you’re driving during rush hour, but where in the city doesn’t it get backed up around 5?
The layout and finishes:
Everything has held up really well over the year I’ve been here and is all of quality. The countertops, appliances, floors and everything are really nice and sleek. Yes, the paint on the walls do show signs of wear if you rub up against them often, but that’s a pretty simple solution; be more careful when you’re moving around or touch up the areas that need it once every few months if it gets really bad. I’ve touched up a few spots twice throughout the year with the free touchup paint they give you and my place looks as good as new.
There are a few spots in my unit where the floor is a little off where it meets the wall like others have mentioned, however it doesn’t bother me because furniture sits right over the top of it and I never notice it nor do any of my guests.
I never hear my neighbors through the walls and have even been up late at night having people over, playing music, etc. and never had any complaints at all. Overall, the apartment is solid and 99% immaculate.
The amenities:
I have friends that live in some of the Related properties that offer a similar product and they all agree the amenities here are on a different level. It’s as nice as you’re going to get in the city and it’s all really well maintained. Everything is always clean and if there is ever an issue, just tell someone from the staff and they fix it pretty quickly.
Parking:
It’s private parking with free guest parking up to 4 hours. Really nice for when you have people over and the fact the garage is exclusively for residents of the building is a plus.
Maintenance:
I’ve only had to call maintenance once to change the water filter on my refrigerator and they were at my door to change it for me in 30 minutes.
Management:
It’s a brand new building, so of course there are going to be changes to adapt to. If the building had been occupied for the last 5 years and had a chance to work through things, I could understand getting upset about changes to rules and things of the nature, but the reality is this. When the building first opened, there were some people abusing the relaxed rules that were in place and taking advantage of the situation. Things have definitely changed for the better as the building as a whole is a lot more mature and under control. I remember the first few months here you could barely use the amenities on the weekends because people would have parties of 15+ at any given time. The rules didn’t change because management wants you to be miserable, they simply changed because you’re sharing the space with hundreds of other tenants who are paying their rent just like you are. Just because you can’t take over an entire portion of a shared space every weekend doesn’t give you a reason to be upset. If you wanted to do that, be a homeowner and don’t rent in a shared building. I don’t even use the amenities that much, but it’s common sense as to why things changed. There are far more people that are happy about the changes as opposed to those who are complaining because they can’t show off to their friends every weekend.
Bottom line:
If you’re a working professional looking for a modern, well maintained, and visually stunning building in the Loop that you can call home, you won’t find anything nicer. Believe me, I looked at all the new buildings before moving here and felt this was the best value and nicest place overall. A year later and I don’t regret my decision at all.

We went to check out the apartments here the other day, on time for our appointment but we were left to wait for about 20 minutes. We had other appointments with neighboring buildings so this kind of messed with the rest of our day.
When we finally got to Kara’s desk, she neither apologized nor felt at all welcoming. She apparently had a busy weekend and was tired this day. Kara, that sucks and all — but we all go through Monday blue’s and we all hate Mondays. She took us to the wrong room and an adorable puppy barked at us. Her nonchalant attitude throughout reflected the overall care of management for its residents. She never emailed us the e-​brochure and quote as she said she would. I called back the next day to have them sent to me again but I never heard back. How much more difficult would it be to get some follow-​up if I were to live here?
The amenities were beyond expectations for a residential building. They were like a resort but honestly, I am not home often enough to enjoy a sauna, steam room, a dipping swimming pool that I can’t even do laps in, and spend time in all 2 or 3 gyms. They had a really cool movie theater. but again, I am usually at work, and I am also not a homebody. So it just didn’t seem worth my $$ to pay for a 247 holiday resort with lame not so holiday mood management.
Not as crucial, but one of the convertibles faced a crazy mural next door not even 3 feet away from its windows. I mean, to each their own but I thought it was hilarious and rather claustrophobic.

I’ve lived in the building for 7 months now, here are my feelings:
Apartment features: the floorplan of the convertible is fantastic and maximizes window space. The finishes are super nice; however, as another commenter mentioned, the flooring was clearly put down in a hurry as the places where the floors meet the window are jagged.
Amenities: when fully functional are great. However, rather than focusing on making sure the elevators are fully functional, the tvs in the gym work, the heaters in the dog park work, the DVD player in the TV room works, or the hot tub is hot, the staff prefers to focus on asinine rules to make themselves feel important. And by staff, I mean Dawn, the manager.
Doormen: nice, but are made to do the dirty work of the office manager. Also, they are apparently not allowed to hold keys for you. So, I wasn’t allowed to leave a key for my mom who was getting into town at 8 pm, but I was going to be at work overnight since I work in the medical field. I was told I was basically SOW.
Office staff: The office manager Dawn is on a total power trip. She is the reason women with even an ounce of power have a bad reputation of going overboard. She is a blatantly favors certain people, so unless you are a fellow middle aged woman, forget about her respecting you. Here are just a couple of idiotic rules and decisions she has made (all while letting things like the elevators break for thanksgiving — the following Sunday):
1. When we first moved in she attempted to force the dog owners to use only the freight elevator. She also said that we were only to use the side entrance that goes into the alley. Wtf. The alley is disgusting with trash and God knows what, there are constantly homeless people digging through the trash (these aren’t the friendly ones, they are the aggressive ones), and we have seen multiple people doing drugs or looking like they are probably doing a drug deal down there. I am a 110 lb female with a 5 lb dog, there is no fucking way I am walking down that alley by myself. Luckily, the management company caught wind of this grand idea and told Dawn that she is an idiot and can’t force people to go out the back door.
2. Doormen can’t hold keys for you
3. My middle aged female neighbor complained about the hot tub being too hot, so dawn immediately had it turned down to a nice luke warm temp. Just what you want, a Luke warm hot tub when it is –10* outside. Again, if it is someone that dawn relates to, she bends over backwards
4. We can only have 5 guests at a time. This may sound like a lot, but we have 3 couples that we are friends with, they aren’t allowed to all come over at one time. However, every Internet company, start-​up, and gym in town can come over and harass every person walking in the door. Dawn actually had Enterprise come over and help people sign up for their car share service under the impression that if they got enough people to sign up the property management company would let them set up shop in out garage. Well, that’s not happening because the garage is private. Fine. But don’t have people pay a fee to come over and then lie to them.
5. You cannot put a sign on the tv room door saying that it is in use. Everytime we watch a movie in there at least 3 people interrupt while taking their friends or girls they are trying to impress on tours. This would be fine if the opened the door, realized you were in there and said sorry and left quickly. Instead, they seem to always open the door, walk in with friends, and talk for a few seconds before actually getting the hell out. If we can’t reserve the TV room, then at least let us put up a sign that it is occupied.
6. When they started the dog poop Dna program Dawn sent out a great email about how they were doing this great service to help residents figure out the breed of their dogs (!), in the long email they said nothing about how the dna thing was actually to enforce picking up your dog’s poop. You had to open an attachment and read a full page letter before you got to that point. I always pick up after my dog, however I felt the email was extremely deceptive.
7. When you open your windows, the pressure causes the wind under the doors to whistle. Dawn thinks this is because of the cold, however she is an idiot, the doors/​windows have always done this. We were sent an email saying that we are not to open our windows unless we go out and buy something to stick under the doors to prevent the noise due to complaints. Uhhhh… This is a fault with the building (there are HUGE gaps under the doors) — shouldn’t they provide us with a fix rather than making us go out and buy something or just not open windows?
8. If you lock yourself out more than twice during your lease, you get charged $ 25 every time you need to be let in. This applies to the apartment as a whole, not just per occupant.

I am sad to hear that Danny is leaving… He welcomed us here and made this place home for our family… I hope measures are made to keep him here since he is an asset to this building and the 73 East Lake community. We are in the process of thinking our upcoming new year contract and him being here does factor into that decision for us.

Update: The building has changed the rules which now limit use of the amenities. This is a deal breaker for me as I can’t even use the business center to sit and work quietly when I need it most during the early morning hours.
Building staff are nice, but RMK management is terrible, trying to cut corners everywhere to save money. The word is getting out and they’re having a ton of trouble retaining tenants and getting new ones. Also, the walls are paper thin and we hear our neighbors partying loudly next door and in the hallways until 2 or 3 AM several nights a week. I’ve had to go over and knock on my neighbors door at least four times late at night to ask them to respectfully tone it down so that the rest of us could get some rest.
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Nice building with all the amenities. Great location close to the Metra. Very friendly, helpful doormen.
Service is good overall, but slow to fix things like broken printers.

Great amenities, which I know is the main and only reason many people moved here… Although a lot of other problems overshadow the good things. The door men are great, as well as a few of the maintenance people. All of the other staff, not so much. I honestly wonder what the manager REALLY does, because she’s definitely not managing the building correctly, not to mention she’s extremely rude, and it seems like she’s out to get everyone, and has something personal against certain people… weird. The coffee machine is never working, either spitting out water or needs the waste to be emptied. If it’s working, the cups have run out, go figure. The hot tub is nice, IF its even hot… The «amenities are ²⁴⁄₇ «but the sauna is turned off at night and the coffee is on a timer. When I asked about this, I was rudely replied to «NO too expensive, the coffee is for the students anyway.» Okay, well other people live here besides students and if each resident pays thousands of dollars a month I highly doubt that something as simple as coffee is going to break your budget. The lease policies have also «changed» which is actually not legal, so we’ll see how long that lasts. The building is not as dog friendly as you think it is. And hopefully there will be no more fires because we were never notified when there was, kind of a safety hazard don’t ya think? Also some of the leasing agents are lazy and rude. Don’t think this will be a fast process because they will sure as hell drag it out for weeks. And some of the leasing agents live in the building, which is weird to me. The apartments were made with beautiful expensive materials, but put together so fast that it looks cheap. What a waste… Even my wood floors are cut jagged where they meet the window. My apartment was filthy upon move in, saw dust everywhere scratches on the walls, dusty and dirty. I complained and it was «cleaned again» but it still looked the dirty. For a new apartment I expected much more. Also almost every week there is an «event» in the lobby, which is not really an event. It is outside companies trying to pitch you a sale on your way in and out of the building. Extremely annoying. No one wants to come home to have AT&T or some other people trying to sell you some crap you don’t need. Oh and but these people have donuts for you! Geez, how tacky… And right in front of the windows for all passerbys to see. Come on, we are residents not your freaking customers. For the amount of money we pay to live here there shouldn’t be any problems. But there is many. This place is misleading take your hard earned money elsewhere or you’ll regret it.

Building is severely understaffed. Simple issues such as there being no coffee cups out as well as the coffee waste bin being full occur almost daily. Also, the doormen are required to attend to other issues within the building which often leaves the front door unstaffed. As a result, my guests have had to wait for me to either come down and get them or for the doorman to return to his post. Also, with the doorman not present at the door, randoms are able to stroll into the building when someone else either enters or exits.
The building itself – units, amenities, location, etc. – is incredible. It’s just under/​mis-​managed.

We have lived for 2 months at 73 E. Lake. Prior to this we rented in the Gold Coast.
The location is fabulous. We are close to theaters, symphony, Millenium Park and many hotels and restaurants. So we love the fact that we are able to walk to all these places.
The building itself it is fabulous. The views from the sky lounge are terrific. We recently hosted a private dinner in the very elegant dining room which we were able to reserve in advance.
Staff has been wonderful. it took no time for them to know our names.
During the day i have all the amenities practically to myself and there are plenty, gym, pool sauna, steam etc.
The apartments are quiet and well designed.

I am pleased with this property. The apartments are well designed and usually quiet, the amenity spaces are the best I’ve ever seen in Chicago. The building is completely setup with very quick WIFI in the public spaces. Comcast and ATT is pre-​wired in units.
The full-​time front door staff has been great.
There have been a number of changes to the house rules during the first year, mostly limiting the number of guests allowed. In most cases, this limits are welcome.

There are a lot of amazing things about this building that made us excited to live here. The amenities surpass anything I’ve seen in a luxury building.
Unfortunately we haven’t found it to be very well managed, and that makes all the difference. To start, while moving in, we had some stuff by the freight elevator. We were putting it there to move to our storage unit on the 10^th floor. Being that hardly anyone lived in the building, theft was the last thing on our mind. Sadly, we walked in to move it to storage and it was all gone. We went to the dumpsters and found half of it. Strangely, we didn’t find all of it. It was clear these items weren’t garbage (a brand new Kitchenaid mixer worth $ 500? in the box). When we told management, the missing items just happened to reappear the next day. It seemed like maintenance stumbled on it, threw out what they didn’t want, and put away what they wanted to keep. Not sure why they would throw any of it out in the first place knowing we were moving in that day. One item they tossed was a framed autographed pic of Johnny Cash and Elvis. It shattered. THEY WON’T PAY TO REFRAME IT! Really?! If you move in here, please be careful. DO NOT LEAVE ITEMS UNATTENDED. They also said we could leave a $ 500 dresser in the storage room for 3 days b/​c it didn’t fit in the storage locker. That was stolen and never found. We should’ve learned the 1^st time. Theft is very prevalent.
Then there are also other things. From the fact that you have to pay a $ 500 deposit to reserve the sky lounge (even though on the tour we were told it was free) but it doesn’t mean you actually reserve the lounge; anyone from the building is still allowed to use it. What’s the point of reserving? Then, if damage does occur, how do you know who did it if anyone can enter? We had an event there and a resident from the building came in who was NOT part of our party and broke a table; luckily the security guard saw it happen and knew it wasn’t us. But if he hadn’t, we’d have been out the $ 500 for a guest that wasn’t ours. We used to live at 1225 Old Town and had our rehearsal dinner for our wedding in that party room; I can’t imagine what it would have been like had strangers been allowed to just wander in.
Additionally, we were told it was a highly secure building. Yet, anyone can just walk into the garage when it’s going up/​down and all interior doors to the building are unlocked. You can just walk in, walk up to a door, hop in an elevator, and be at the front door of any apartment. For 12 months at Old Town, while it may have not been the smartest thing, we never locked our door. I didn’t even own a key for 12 months. Because the security was SO TIGHT. Nobody could get in the building through the garage; they had to go down to the lobby and get buzzed in. And even if the visitor was my mom or sister and security recognized them? They had to call us, get approval. I’ve had friends come over at this new building and they just knock on my door, and I’m like, «how did you even get in here!!!»
I’ve emailed management about these questions, as well as a few other questions. (Update ¹⁰⁄₁₄ never got a response.)
Last, it’s like living in a dorm. The people next to us have HUGE parties every night. The parties pour into the hallway, well past midnight. The stereo is blasting. The walls inside OUR apartment are literally shaking, pictures shaking on the walls. Our children sleep in the bedroom that is next to this apartment and we’ve had to bring them into our bedroom to sleep because they can hear every single word of the blasting music and screaming party goers and can’t sleep because of it. I’ve mentioned it to management, am hoping it gets better, but I’m not really sure what you can do about rowdy neighbors. I just wish the apartments were built more solid so we wouldn’t be three rooms away hearing the exact song that is playing. We had our issues with Old Town (high rent) but the apartments are built so solid we didn’t hear a single sound. (Update ¹⁰⁄₁₄: still loud!)
I hope things get better. This building seemed like a dream come true to us when we first saw it. (¹⁰⁄₁₄: CAN’T WAIT TO MOVE OUT!)
Three times we’ve come in through the side door that leads to an alley and it’s been open & unlocked, meaning any person wandering through the Loop can just get into the building, to your apartment.
The positive thing: front door staff is very friendly & helpful. THEY’RE GREAT! I just wish they had more support. At Old Town there was ALWAYS someone at the front door, 24×7, door was never unattended. Here the doormen have to do other things that take them away from the door. (Which once left me stuck outside for 10 min when my garage opener didn’t work & nobody was there to open it while I was stuck on Lake.)
UPDATED 4 MONTHS POST LIVING HERE: If you’re 22, want a party place, don’t mind living in an overpriced, unsecure dorm where hot tub/​pool is always too packed to use? Enjoy! And enjoy your stolen items, too!