Friday 30 December 2011

Alexandra Tower Liverpool - Dec 2011

As someone who is stubborn and has little other choice but to have lived in this building for the last 3 years, and has a wont be beaten attitude, I would say to others, that unless you have the same attitude, steer clear and live somewhere else.

Below are a list of some of the issues that have been experienced at Alexandra Tower for the last 2-3 years. All without resolution....

Unsafe Building?

A 100kg glass panel fell off the building from one of the top floors in March 2010 narrowly missing a delivery driver near the front entrance (reported here in local news) yet nearly 2 years later, the safety curtain around the building to prevent death to residents and passing public (from further falling glass) is still up. Why is that?

No Maintenance

Despite said glass panel falling off the building nearly two years ago it has yet to be replaced. This is reflective of the care that is taken with the rest of the building, including getting one of the building lifts fixed so it doesn’t get drenched in sewage when it reaches the ground floor. One of the lifts routinely smells of sewage and despite complaints from both residents, visitors, letting agents and staff, the problem and the smell remain.

No Window Cleaning and very little other cleaning

The windows to the building, despite having a winch and cradle on the building roof to do so, haven’t been cleaned once since the building was built. So, that River view you thought you were getting is largely smeared with salt and sand with the winds that the building is exposed to. So when the Queen Mary II or other cruise ships are docked mere feet from the building, you can forget seeing them or taking a photo of them.

This attitude is also applied to the general upkeep to the building. There used to an onsite cleaner but that has been replaced to hovering the communal carpets once a month. So if there is any mess, and sadly some residents have been scumbags or have had scumbag guests who will leave faeces in a lift, or in the fire exit staircase, along with rubbish they can’t be prepared to take down, the problem stays there for days, or weeks through lack of on site cleaner.

Carparks and Cars getting stuck

If you have a car, don’t live here. You will be late for work. If you are self-employed you will miss meetings and upset clients and as a result, you will lose business. Not to mention the extra taxi fares you have to pay out when the car park lifts fail. AND THEY DO FAIL.

This issue with the car parks has been ongoing and without a complete resolution but temporary fix after temporary fix for two years. As I write this blog post both car lifts are out and my car is stuck inside the building.

During this month of December 2011 there has been several outages and approx 4 days of total outage in this month alone. Granted a lot of outages are caused by residents hitting the doors and breaking them but not all outages, and in any case, whatever the reason for the outage, your boss, business customer, children needing picking up from school, dentist or any other thing important in your life wont give a shit about the reason, just that you werent there when you were meant to be!

Residents

By and large, most residents are a nice bunch of people. Working city dwellers and students make up the majority of the building yet earlier this year one major Liverpool letting agent was found out to not be carrying out any checks on the tenants it was putting forward. A practice that had gone on for some time. Therefore, not only were credit checks not being performed or former landlord references being checked, they weren’t even asked for. Surely this is counter productive as by opening your borders to any old person you may well attract some nicer elements of society but chances are you will let in those that will ruin it for everyone else. And this is exactly what happened.

Whether this practice was agreed by, or under the approval / knowledge of the management company (Braemar Estates) or the Receiver’s (Zolfo Cooper) overseeing the building post liquidation of its former owner is anyone’s guess?

When you don’t perform any checks before people move in, and you also allow people to pay cash, apartments get ransacked, drugs gangs etc move in and the building becomes like something out of the Wire. Several police raids have taken place at Alexandra Tower this year.

Outlook?

That not one single issue highlighted to the management company in the last 2-3 years has been effectively tackled or seemingly even attempted to be resolved begs the question as to how long the building owners will allow a revolving door policy to flourish. One where most people don’t renew their leases and owner/landlords are having their investment handled no better than a Nick Lesson hedge fund.

As other new apartments are completed (eg Mann Island) the likes of Alexandra Tower wont be able to compete (it cant now really) and until that day where it cant get any worse, and it does feel like the current powers that be are just letting it run down until that day, then maybe they will act?

Bearing this in mind, ask yourself if this is a building you would like to move into?

I will tell you for certain that if I hadn’t invested my time and money in this building and my business wasn’t in the city, and I was faced with the decision to move into it now, I would stay the hell away.

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