Built in 1927 overlooking Lincoln Drive in East Falls, the historic Alden Park Apartments feature amenities such as an indoor pool, gym and tennis courts and glamorous former residents including Grace Kelly’s mother, Margaret. However, residents say safety concerns and slow maintenance response now cast a shadow over its storied past and luxury perks.
Of the 772 units that comprise Alden Park Luxury Apartments at at 2961 West Schoolhouse Lane, roughly 200 of its occupants came together to form a tenants' association earlier this year.
For Kadi Ashby, one of the group’s de-facto group leaders, ongoing moisture issues drove her to organize. She described the property’s management, RAM Partners, LLC, as unresponsive. The building is owned by L3C Capital Partners, an investment firm based in New York.
The Local reached out to Ram Partners multiple times for comment, but the company did not respond.
“I had a leak and black mold in my apartment for over three months, and management did not respond to it or rectify the issue, and I had to hire a lawyer,” Ashby told the Local. “A lot of tenants go through the same things. Then there were some issues with pieces of concrete falling off of the building that management was just not responding to. They wouldn’t warn residents not to walk near the building. We decided something had to be done about it.”
Walking around Alden’s property, Ashby pointed to fallen chunks of the building’s decorative masonry. At a tenants association meeting, she compiled images from other tenants showing up to 10-inch-long chunks of concrete, one that appeared to have fallen from the top floor.
In April, Ashby, along with a couple of other tenants, attended a Northwest Tenants meeting, a group organized by East and West Mt. Airy Neighbors (EMAN and WMAN).
The group’s purpose is to allow tenants to connect and share experiences while providing attendees with a list of resources from local and national tenant rights organizations.
At the meeting, Ashby spoke with City Councilmember Cindy Bass, who attended the April meeting. She told Bass about some of the issues Alden residents experience and described a lack of responsiveness from the Office of Licenses and Inspections (L&I) through the 311 process.
L&I was a target of that meeting with several other attendees describing instances where they’ve contacted the office over potentially unsafe conditions in their buildings, only for nothing to be done.
After the meeting, WMAN sent out a newsletter reading, “Councilmember Bass generously offered to contact the Department of Licenses and Inspections about persistent issues you all shared regarding maintenance, HVAC, extreme rental rate hikes, etc.”
The Local reached out to Bass’ office to see if L&I was contacted, but they declined to comment.
Tenants’ experiences
Ashby is just one of many tenants in Alden’s group who have experienced similar issues.
Deidre Kotz Marino has lived at Alden for less than a year and immediately encountered problems during the leasing process.
Marino told the Local, “I was initially applying for a different unit, and then my unit became available. I liked the floor plan better, but it wouldn't let me change it on the application. They didn't answer my phone calls, they didn't answer my email, and by the time they changed it for me, a whole weekend went by and the rent went up about $80 and they would not honor the rate I had been trying to get.”
The tenants' association began tracking price fluctuations for specific apartments rising and falling every couple of days. According to Ashby’s tracking, over the course of one week, one unit was listed for $1599, then $1520, then $1485, and one day later, back to $1520 before falling again the next day to $1445.
Marino also felt deceived during the application process, and was not allowed to see the unit prior to moving in.
She said, “When I first opened the door to my place, I found that it was very much not the square footage that had been advertised. And at that point it's like, well, I've already moved in, what can I really do about this?”
For Marino, another issue arose on move-in when she noticed her mailbox was locked with its door open, and she wasn’t given a mail key. Without the key, she could not close the door and worried her mail would be stolen.
Though she was issued her front door key several weeks prior, it took consistent calling and pestering to the front office before the issue was fixed. During that process, Marino says the staff was combative and rude.
She told the assistant property manager, “‘Hey, as a resident who lives here, I would have appreciated more communication by phone, getting people to return my calls. I would have appreciated my emails being responded to. I should not have to leave work to get a key that should have been issued at move-in, especially with Saturday hours.’ And she just glared at me and said, ‘Are you done?’”
Another member of the tenants’ association, Corinne Annalisa Scala experienced similar issues on move-in. It took several months for Scala to receive a mail key. During that time, she had to place a post office hold on all incoming mail.
She was also unable to tour her actual unit before submitting an application, and instead was shown a similar unit. After consistently calling and emailing, she was finally able to see her apartment just before move-in, only to find it was a “completely different layout.”
Scala told the Local, “I talked to the vice president of [RAM Partners], and she refused to give me the unit that I had an application for. She told me that if I wanted to have that unit, then I'd have to wait two months for that unit to become available, and I'd have to pay a new price.”
Scala’s unit did not have a dishwasher like the unit she applied for, and the living room made it difficult to fit furniture.
She added, “We all really care about living here, but the management really is not only ineffective, they're combative to anything we try to do to improve the living situation.”
Maintenance delays
When Scala moved in, she noticed a leak in her bathroom and put in a maintenance request. Over eight months later, the issue continued to worsen. She submitted multiple requests during that time.
Scala said, “They had come in multiple times when I was at home to check on it, and they apparently just listened for dripping. And when a guy came finally when I was home, it was so bad I insisted he check it and he literally put his hand behind the toilet and his hand went through the wall.” It then took three more months for maintenance to fix the hole. In the meantime, mice used it to enter Scala’s apartment.
Scala also shared a video of her bathroom without windows or vents. Philadelphia building code requires vents for bathrooms without windows.
Another resident, Allie Hart, found during move-in that one of the bathrooms in their four-bedroom, three-bathroom apartment was unusable.
Hart told the Local, “After months of back and forth, trying to get [maintenance] to come in, they had outside plumbers come in and put some holes in the walls, and then kind of disappeared. So that bathroom is storage now.”
They added, “They haven't been back and we haven't heard from anyone in over a year. Basically, they had the washer emptying into the bathtub in there. I don't know why they hooked it up like that, but they were supposed to come and reroute it and hook it up correctly, and the hole is there in the wall to start it, but no one ever came back to finish it. And we just kind of gave up.”
Even though they had one less usable bathroom, Hart said they were not offered a decrease in rent.
Tenants organizing
The tenants association got the attention of City Councilmember Curtis Jones Jr. who oversees Alden Park’s district. He decided to tour the property with association members.
Jones told the Local, “I had no idea the depth of the asset that we have in the fourth district. To put it plainly, they don't build them like that no more. The architecture is second to none. We couldn't replace that.”
He emphasized that a nearly 100-year-old building is going to have problems, but said that after speaking with residents, the “gap between the service request and the actual turnaround time from the maintenance people and ownership and their responsiveness was the overarching theme.”
Jones also found the property's security lacking. According to the tenants’ association, while Alden Park is gated, the pedestrian gates are left open and drivers come through roadway gates without proving they are residents.
Jones said, “I'd like to see a maintenance company that isn't on a cost containment business model. I'd rather them know that an investment on the front end can yield on the back end. Meaning that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. When old buildings like that go bad, they go really bad.”
Organizing ahead
As Ashby and the tenants began to organize, she said she noticed some pushback from management.
“Management, we believe, has begun to retaliate against us for forming a tenants association,” Ashby said. “They had refused to look into any further maintenance requests and I was screamed at by multiple members of the maintenance staff.”
She added, “Right now, they are shutting down our meetings, which they have never done previously, and telling us we're not allowed to gather in groups larger than 15 people. … Nothing in our lease or community rules has ever said anything to that effect. And then they threatened us with lease violations if any events take place in the future.”
Ashby and the association members hope that by gathering enough members, they'll be able to bring management to the table and address some of their shared issues.
“They won't recognize us as a group or hold any discussions with us. So now we're looking to gather enough members where they have no choice but to recognize us,” she said.
State Representative Tarik Khan (D), who district includes East Falls, said, “Residents of Alden Park deserve to live in dignity, should have a clean and safe environment, and should expect to have any issues or disputes handled in a timely manner by management. I’m sorry to hear of the issues residents are reporting, and I applaud the residents for working together to harness their collective power to form a tenants association at Alden Park.”
