Lark Athens

Dealing with this apartment complex and its management for the last two years of college was one of the worst parts of my experience in Athens. They are unorganized, there was a new manager weekly it felt like, and they struggled to get anything important done within a reasonable period of time. The girls who worked in the front office were always nice but kindness can only put up so much of a facade for this horribly managed establishment. I do not recommend living here at all. Live in a house with a halfway decent landlord and pay half the price. It is not worth living here. After my apartment flooded and they had us living in another apartment complex for almost half a year, they put a fridge in my apartment that did not work and had a fruit fly nest in it. When I asked for a new fridge, two maintenance boys came out to my apartment to "fix" and "clean" it. I eventually got a new fridge but at what cost? The complex is not safe. There are homeless people on Willow Street often and the door on the first floor has not been locked once since I lived there. There is dog pee on the floor constantly. No one has ever cleaned the hallways. It stinks in there. The gate to the parking deck worked for MAYBE half of the time I lived there. Anyone can enter the premises with ease. The automated assistant "Liam" that you have to deal with on the phone sucks so bad--you will never get a question answered or a concern addressed because of the lazy, greedy people that think it's okay to charge over 1000 dollars a month to live in a dirty, stinky, unsafe, overpriced, outdated h*ll hole. I have many more stories of my disdain for the Lark where that came from too

Good, sometimes loud

The SCION group, the prestigious student housing company that manages the Lark, will do the bare minimum to keep a roof over your head. In late January a contractor hired by SCION to work at the Lark flooded my apartment and several other floors. For what its worth, a regional manager for SCION assured me that these were cracker jack contractors and were very good at what they do. They were hired to repair flood damage and caused significantly more flood damage to the building. They also broke a piece of my furniture and tried to hide it from me – yes these were stellar contractors indeed. I spent the first 14 nights between hotel rooms and another three and a half months sleeping on a dorm room mattress waiting for the contractor who flooded my apartment to gut and rebuild it. The flood happened in late January and the work is still not finished today. I finally left the pre-furnished dorm to move back into an unfinished apartment at the Lark because I was waking up at night with back pain due to the horrible furnishings. My apartment at the Lark at this point was still missing a bedroom wall and had no AC. The best part about all of this is SCION has not provided anyone with any information on whether we will receive some sort of reimbursement for this epic cluster-F. I have received about three responses in 5 months essentially saying they would get back to me.

I can only assume they hope people like me will stop asking and go away. They probably figure a lot of their tenants will just move on since they’re students and the PR fallout will be minimal. God knows I wouldn’t want them to set a dangerous precedent of compensating tenants whose living arrangements they’ve completely screwed up for over half a year, that would mean lost revenue.

In the rare chance anyone from SCION does read this and responds they would probably say something along the lines of “legally we don’t owe you anything.” That’s how this company operates

The apartment itself is ok, but the property management is absolutely awful and refuses to fix any issues that arise. My air conditioner has been out for 5 weeks now, and management has done nothing to have it fixed. This has been a recurring experience with other issues as well.

The Lark is walkable from campus and is the cheapest place to live without roommates that's near downtown. However, rents do keep going up and it can be loud because undergraduates live here so ask for an apartment on one of the top floors so you are less likely to hear them.

Its very close to campus and ideal for walking. It's close to restaurants and downtown. The rent is lower than other nearby properties, but the units are larger and better maintained.

It has been a pretty good experience for me.