The Towne apartment was noisy. Delivery trucks from nearby Safeway and and Trader Joe unpacked palettes at seemingly random hours. In the middle of the night, metal and steel banged and thundered from the loading docks. People on the street spilled out onto the street after hours. Loud yelling erupted into fights and sometimes police were called to intervene. My husband and I jokingly referred to the noise as coming from the “mean streets of Queen Anne.”
The noise of the city is the price of living in an urban area with convenient shopping and easy bus access. It was other noise that kept me awake. There was a persistent loud gurgling in the kitchen pipes that whined, hissed and chugged at random hours of the day and night. I still don’t know the cause except the Towne apartments had water issues. On three separate occasions, there was no hot water for up to eight hours. The two elevators that serviced the five-story building frequently broke down, which wasn’t an issue for me to walk down four flights of steps, but it was an obstacle for the elderly, a few of them in walkers, and the parents of small children and infants.
Then I had a had a minor catastrophe. On August 20th, when I was returning from my Pilates class, I turned my key in the front entrance door and it stuck. The door would not open. I tried turning the key numerous times but the door would not budge. I turned the key once more and heard the door click to unlatch, but it was still stuck. I pulled on the door handle. The entire handle flew off. The force sent me falling backward in the air where I landed on the pavement with the broken door handle lying nearby on the ground. A woman passing by helped me up from the ground and asked me if I was okay. I felt sore and stunned but not injured. She cautioned me that some injuries are not apparent right away. I went into the leasing office and alerted Luna T. She simply let me into the building from the leasing entrance door into the building.
My husband and I were stunned to see there was no follow-up. No incident report. No call from the leasing office to see if I was okay.
By the summer, I noticed the side entrance hallway off of Crockett Street had cracks in the wall. Too many to count. And unusual, given that the building was just over a year old. Within several days, the hallway was newly repainted to cover up the cracks. In early September through October, the garage was quartered off—four parking spaces at a time—by orange cones while 12 inch holes were drilled into the walls and refilled with new concrete.
Just in passing, I talked to employees of neighboring businesses about my experience with the Towne. A manager at Trader Joe’s, which is located in the retail space on the ground floor, told me they had water leakage problems in their warehouse. A manager at the Massage Envy, located in the Towne’s sister building Sweetbrier, told me they had also experienced water issues. This was during a time when Seattle had experienced one of the longest dry spells on record.
As I approached the end of the lease, it was time to file my year-end taxes for my business. My accountant asked me to get a 1099 from the Towne, since I was declaring the lease as a business expense. The Towne refused to give me a 1099. In fact, they cited a clause in the rental agreement that said I could not run a business out of my apartment. They failed to read the portion that dealt with a home-based business and internet connectivity. It was as if I was a criminal and dealing drugs instead of running a 15-year old P.R business. They ignored that it was management who had listed my business name on my mailbox and that I had been forthright from the onset in giving them information about my business and the reason why I was renting an apartment. For three weeks, I persisted and suggested they check with their legal department. Finally, they provided me with a 1099.