The Avenue at Orono

If I could put zero stars, I would. I applied for an apartment in December to start in July. Found a better cheaper spot- and notified them half a year before the lease starts. I was given 14 days to pay 500 dollars of a fee. Because of that, I couldn’t afford my rent, and to this day I continue to be behind. They’ll take you for every penny if you let them. Find somewhere else to live, guys. Seriously.

I wouldn’t recommend this place to any college students(parents). The Fees they come up with are ridiculous! They switched the utilities to SimpleBills which is a Fraudulent scam of a company. Look them up. Have your attorney review the lease carefully! My son turned key in 6/6/23 and we still keep getting bills for what they say are damages and fines! What a joke! They respond to review acting like they want to talk about it. Do you know how many phone calls I’ve made to them. They do nothing! Let me stand corrected…they took a fee of $3.50 off!!!! Wow Julie your an amazing manager!

I would like to start by saying, great job at The Ave. I have a couple friends up here that I come and see most weekends. The place can be busy at times, but it seems your security officers are all over it. Captain Anderson, Bert and Joe please please never get rid of them. Theses guys know how to talk to anyone. They are always waving, saying HI, stopping and making sure people are ok. I have even seen them get out and pet the dogs and just have fun with them. They truly care about the residents up here. I was visiting my friend in 3100 last weekend, Anderson and Bert had to come to his house twice because of noise and they were pleasant both times. Yes Captain Anderson had to be more stern the second time, but that was my friends fault for turning the music back up after he was told to keep it down. Just a wonderful job by all your guards. Please let Captain Anderson, Bert and Joe know they are the best!!!

Wouldn't even give this place one star!!!!!!! Absolute BS experience living here. I have lived in many different complexes in my four years here at Maine and this is the worst by a landslide. My apartment has had trouble after trouble with flooding, broken washer/dryer, window screens falling off after rain and snow, and the heat in the downstairs didn't even work for all of the winter months. They gave us a space heater to fix the heating issue in the downstairs and then charged us overage fees for having it. They knew of my building flooding, when the space heater they provided us was still in my apartment. I got home to a flooded first floor of my apartment and a plugged in space heater, someone could have SERIOUSLY been hurt and when I told the Ave about the flood they said, oh your apartment isn't the first one we have heard of today....... SERIOUSLY!!!!!!!!! Myself or one of my roommates could have been seriously injured because the Ave staff is incompetent and lazy. Every time it rains the downstairs floods and has ruined all of our carpets and personal furniture and maintenance just walks in and out of our apartment as they please, moving furniture into the kitchen area for weeks and making it hard to live in our own apartment, that we pay WAY too much for to begin with. They also put these huge industrial fans and leave them in our apartment for weeks at a time, telling us to keep them on through the night to help dry to water damage..... absolute nonsense. The higher staff is extremely unprofessional and the entire office is filled with students who are friendly, but in my opinion, still shouldn't be running an office that handles hundreds of students information and packages. Like I said, the students are all friendly and kind when dealing with them, but that is just my opinion for a professional living complex. This place is so expensive as it is and then every month, regardless of if your heat is even on or not, they somehow find something to charge you an overage fee for, absolute bs, and when asked to be shown a breakdown of the charges, they conveniently tell me that its all set and it was their mistake.... how can it be 'your mistake' for months on end?? I just wonder how many students they are scamming because themselves or their parents just pay the overage fees without even questioning them in the first place. This place is so cheaply made and there are so many issues with cosmetic things (from construction over the summer) and structural things (maintenance comes in once a week to drill holes into our wall downstairs) which I'm sure they'll try to make myself and my roommates pay for when we leave. This place is brand new and should not be experiencing this many issues. I could go on and on but as a whole just DO NOT LET ANYONE YOU LOVE LIVE HERE.. IT IS A DISGUSTING AND UNPROFESSIONAL MESS!! ABSOLUTE TRASH. It wouldn't let me upload any photos of the disaster that has been my apartment all year long and wouldn't let me upload the video of my apartment flooding.... how convenient.

The Avenue may be an appealing apartment complex with their close-to-campus location and amenities, but it is far from that. Their apartments have cheaply constructed furniture and previous tenants damage that will most likely be paid by other tenants. The clubhouse staff is nice and easy to deal with, but upper management is terrible. The property manager, Julie Kenney, doesn’t seem to care about her residents and would rather tell them “nothing can be done” than provide assistance. She does not seem to want to help with anything that loses her money. Parking is often a disaster, with no spots after 6pm unless you enjoy a walk to your complex. Especially in the winter months, snow and ice makes it more difficult and dangerous. Ice is untreated on sidewalks which makes walking difficult without falling multiple times. Parties happen constantly and management doesn’t do anything about it, telling you to call the police. Even calling the cops, parties will resume after an officer has left. You will get charged for any and everything here. In addition to rent and utilities, you have to pay a 60$ service fee to use Simplebills to pay for utilities. You have to pay for any replacement or repair that should be free of cost if faulty. Edit: Got charged for “broken blinds” but the strings to pull them up or down was just uneven… what an absolute joke. Any experience I had here was negative. They ponder so much money from college students, its disgusting. “Serious Fun”

Any positive reviews you read on here are due to the fact the ave will bribe tenants with pizza to write a good review because if they don't it will be filled with one-star reviews. This is truly one of the worst places to consider living while attending college or in general. It may look decent but the quality of everything inside the apartments is trash. Almost every week my roommate and I were dealing with something breaking, whether that be the washer and dryer, our fridge, lights going out, outlets not working, fans constantly breaking. I wouldn't be surprised if they set things up to break just so they can charge tenants to fix them. My roommate and I's fridge broke over 10 times and maintenance would always take their time to come fix it, leading to my roommate and I having to throw away hundreds of dollars of food and this was a regular occurrence. Management is offering me 50 dollars to reimburse for the lost food if I drive 5 hours to collect it. What's the point? Funny how they offer that after I'm already gone. The owner of the Ave could care less about the well-being of her tenants with responses that usually started with "Oh well" and ended with "I can't help you". I had a light go out over 5 times in 2 weeks and maintenance would come and fix it and then proceed to charge me. One of the last times Mantaince came they removed my ceiling fan and ended up damaging all the ceiling around the fan and ripping off paint. My roommates and I are each being charged $166 for LEDS that were left in the apartment. Didn't realize it cost $498 to remove lights. Must be really hard work. The owner cares about one thing and it is: How can I make the most money off these college students? It's sad and hopefully, you don't make the awful mistake of signing there like I did.