The Venue

I lived at The Venue for the last three years and loved it! The rooftop pool makes summer so enjoyable, and the views from the building are second-to-none. It is also very dog friendly and has a nice (smaller) gym for when you don't want to leave the building for a workout. It is also very walk-able to so many locations (downtown, the strip, the point, north shore, station square, south side). Like any building, it is only as good as the people working there. In my experience, the staff has been very good. I only interacted with the newest property manager, Frank, during my move-out, but he seems like he'll be a great one.

This place is terrible and does not care about anything except getting their money. I toured an apt with grey flooring & a walk in bathroom to get neither of those things. It was dirty upon move in & completely different than toured. The ac units don’t work resulting in it being 90 degrees in the unit on top of a 500 dollar bill for the electric. Maintenance is unexperienced & will go days unanswered from people in the office. Fire alarms goes off all the time, the water gets shut off multiple times throughout the month for “repairs” & the elevators rarely work. Good luck living here :)

Great location, decent on site gym, the community is very friendly and welcoming, and the rooftop pools is a giant plus. Unfortunately that's the best this place has to offer. The Venue had numerous hiccups throughout my time here like elevators breaking down a few times leaving residents stranded for hours and pipes bursting in various units resulting in flooded apartments. Not to mention upon moving in my place was not cleaned and required a lot of work to get it into shape and wasn't offered any concessions for it. They unfortunately raised rent by 30% so I left the place. Upon leaving I was charged an absurd amount of money for things not being cleaned when they were spotless. Additionally as mentioned before, the place wasn't even clean when I moved in so its incredibly unfair to charge the next tenant when they didn't provide a clean apartment in the first place. After a month of attempting to get any answers as to why I was wrongfully charged for numerous things I have been completely ignored. I would never go near this place or their parent company Nexus ever again given the way they treated me.

The building is in a great location. There are some significant issues. I signed a lease for a newly renovated unit and the lease was suppose to begin on Jan 7. Two days before the lease was supposed to begin, I contacted the property management to discuss moving in. At this point, management told me that the unit had not yet passed inspection and that I would be given a temp unit. The unit failed inspection, apparently for reasons relating to plumbing and the elevator. Fortunately, the unit passed inspection on Jan 20, and I was able to get possession of my actual unit. In my conversations with others in the building, many have not had the same luck. Some people had been in temporary apartments for months. There were sig issues with the unit. I sent the property manager an email with a list of 7 maintenance issues that I considered "urgent" and 1 that was an emergency. I also noted several outlets that presented gaps between the outlet and the wall and a poor paint job. The emergency issue related to the AC/heat---despite me having the temperature set to 70, the temp in the apartment was 58 degrees. Fortunately this was an easy fix---the air filter was clogged and needed to be replaced and the management team did respond promptly. This, and all the urgent issues, were addressed promptly. However, the inattention to detail has been typical of my experience. In Oct 2021, the building was condemned and the City issued a notice to vacate due to safety issues related to the elevator. All residents had to be relocated to hotels for an extended period of time. This was approximately the time that I toured the property, but I was not informed then or at any point after that there had been safety issues that required the entire building to be vacated. In light of my experience, I requested a rent concession of 50% off for the month of Feb. This mirrored the move-in promotional of half off your first month. My request was denied, with the explanation that I could have broken my lease. Knowing what I know now, I would not have rented at The Venue and encourage others to avoid. Edit: staff and maintenance apparently quitting. I had to call emergency maintenance in the middle of the night (which was a nightmare in and of itself), and when the maintenance guy came, he told me he was quitting in a week. There also been frequent issues with the fire alarm going off, the elevators being inoperable, and someone getting shot.

Not a good place to live. 1. We cannot open the windows, the sun hits and gets very hot during the day. 2. Elevators got broken some month ago and we need to leave the apartment for a whole week with only 2 days notice. 3. Pool is closed most of the year except for a couple of months and it smells dog since the dogs park is next to the pool. 4. Stairs are dirty. 5. Elevators are busy and dirty since they are doing maintenance in some of the floors. 6. There is only a couple of floors connected to the parking. 7. A lot of restrictions in case you want to break the lease and move earlier. 7. Etc, etc, etc.

So many broken promises followed by dismissive attitudes from management. My husband and I moved from out of state and they called us 4 days before we were closing on our house and starting our drive to Pittsburgh to tell us our unit was not done. We spent 10 nights in a hotel and when we moved in the apartment was far from finished. It has now been over 2 weeks that we’ve lived here and they fixed one ac unit (website said new ac units, ours was not), one hole (they forgot to install a light switch to the second bedroom and just left a hole, they also forget to build any closets in the bedrooms) and ran a cable line to my unit (Comcast said they are notorious for saying they have the line ran correctly but it’s old and needs replaced, he said this is on his list of worst buildings in the city) out of the list of more than 20 items that need addressed. We currently have our bedroom ac unit leaking and possible black mold covering the inside of the unit (once again their website says new ac units and the property manger told us in June everything would be new). I received an email from our property manager last night that stated, “ We are aware that you have been unhappy here. We are happy to have you move out immediately and end the lease with no further penalties. The security deposit will not be refunded however.” I guess they need the $750 deposit to finish our apartment for the next poor person that signs with them. We have no where to go at the moment so we’ll take it day by day until we can figure something out.

I have been trying to contact the Venue for months and not a single leasing agent has responded to me. I have left several emails and voicemails in order to get a tour, but I have never received a response. The communication here is horrible and they put no effort into renting out units. Do not waste your time with this place; these agents will never reach out to you. Every other apartment I have looked at in Pittsburgh has replied to my inquiries the same day that I sent the email, and the Venue has yet to reply to a single one of my inquiries over a course of two months. They have put no effort and showed no interest giving me ANY information regarding the property.

Update from my review in March - NOTHING HAS CHANGED! Except they started to allow Stay Alfred, an Air BNB company, to rent out here, which is usually only drunk people trying to not drive home for the night. I have FOUR Stay Alfred's on my floor. IT IS AWFUL. All night partying. ----My review from March below---- Expectations were high! Whoever the project manager is, must be brand new to this or on vacation for a few months. All amenities were delayed months after promised. I predict the pool will not be complete for another summer. I moved into paint splattered floors (that took 5 hours for me to scrape off), floor boards with huge gaps, dust and sawdust everywhere, a yellow stained bathtub, garbage just sitting in the middle of the floor, cabinet doors that look like they were run over, painted then presented in my apartment. Spent most of my time here waiting for the one unsafe "working" elevator. It seems as though every project is abandoned for weeks at a time. I assume this is because they would rather have more people move in (and have an awful experience moving in with one faulty elevator) and get another rent check than to keep their current tenants happy. The windows are single pane and were promised to be replaced before winter. They have not and I have ice on the inside of my windows most mornings with a $400 electric bill to heat 700 square feet. I heard of other electric bills being almost $1000. The leasing office is a nice perk, but if you are looking to get a nice cup of joe after 5:00PM or on the weekends, the office is locked (guess they don't trust tenants to behave properly?) The elevators are a huge inconvenience and quite unsafe as people get stuck for hours. The elevator being replaced was quoted to take 3 months, it's been 6 with no end in sight. The leasing manager, Cameron, is awesome and frankly I feel quite bad that he has to take all the complaints when the project manager will not even relay proper information to him. The owner and project manager of this building must be extremely cheap, unapologetic people that only care about rent checks. The maintenance crew is very responsive and available every day (they have to be with all the issues). Moving seems to be the only answer, but with one rickety elevator, I may have to wait a while.