Still under construction, The Vue on MacGregor has been the victim of multiple construction delays. | Valli Challa/The Cougar
Molly Nelson has had enough with inadequate housing.
A transfer student from Texas Christian University, the early childhood education junior spent her first year at UH living at Cambridge Oaks. Less than impressed, Nelson chose to sign a lease at The Vue on MacGregor, a privately owned off-campus apartment complex with nearly 350 beds, where she would share a unit with three of her friends.
Her original move-in date was scheduled for Aug. 23.
After multiple notices from The Vue administration pushing back her move-in date, Nelson moved into her apartment on Saturday, six weeks after she was originally supposed to.
The Vue has been the victim of multiple construction delays which have displaced the nearly 350 students who have already signed leases to live on the property.
Residents are being moved in three sections — A, B and C — which coincide with where they live in the building. On their website, all of the floor plans are shown to be sold out, but less than half of the complex has occupants.
“The administration was extremely unprofessional, undertrained and uncoordinated,” said political science sophomore Noah Douglas. “They sent out numerous emails, but most of them contained little to no information and mostly every response was just an apology for lateness.”
Construction issues have not been the only problems for The Vue. Spotty internet, power outages and fire alarms that at times have lasted over an hour have been constant issues for the students who have moved in.
Philosophy sophomore Austin Cumbow has experienced several issues.
“So far, every time I have called in (to report a problem) they have told me that the problem is on-site, which is usually a problem with the ongoing construction of the building,” Cumbow said.
“The other day the power was out for over five hours, and a lot of residents’ food went rotten. The Vue did reach out to them via Facebook to hopefully refund their money for their food, but I’m not sure exactly what happened with that.”
Both Nelson and Cumbow have reported their problems to The Vue’s Facebook page, only to have either their comments deleted or their profiles completely blocked, as is the case with Cumbow.
“I tried to post a review of my own, and when I clicked ‘Write a Review’ it said something like ‘You cannot review this page because you have been blocked by the admin,’ which means that essentially The Vue blocked me,” Cumbow said. “I actually had to have my dad post a review that I wrote that night so that I could leave my opinion along with a nice one-star rating.”
Calls to The Vue administration and Stacey Lecocke, the senior vice president of Grand Campus Living, which owns The Vue, went unanswered and unreturned by press time.
Even then, after multiple attempts to interact with administration and higher-ups in the company, students like Nelson just want the building to be finished and all of the drama to be over.
“It is hard to stay optimistic about something that can be compared to’ The Boy Who Cried Wolf,’ ” said Nelson.
Wow that`s terrible.
The Vue is not owned by Grand Campus Living, they are the management company for a private developer.
What a bunch of incompetent fools.
I remember when this place first set up their little leasing office on Calhoun and started renting for the coming semester when they were only just breaking ground… Folks, if something seems too good to be true, it likely is.
Over 40 student housing projects across the country have
been delivered late, both on and off campus, due the an extreme shortage of
construction labor and materials. The US economy has rebounded significantly,
but construction industry has not been able to keep up with the acceleration.
In Houston alone, there are over 30 high rise residential developments in some
phase of development and construction; enough to double the size of the center
city at one time and an increase of 75% since last year. It has not helped that
in some of these latter weeks, it has rained 5 of the 7 days of the week as we
tried to complete the exterior amenities and landscape.
I note this to put into perspective that the construction
delays that have occurred at the Vue on MacGregor are not isolated. This does
not reduce the amount of extreme inconvenience that the new residents have been
put through. As the father of two students in college myself, I am completely
empathic to the situation that many families have been experiencing for the
last several weeks. We have done everything possible to reduce the
inconvenience, including providing hotel accommodations for those displaced,
paying for meals, supplying transportation, credits for delayed move in, and
“inconvenience checks” or gift cards – all of this costing the developer
approximately $1 million.
Some of the issues have been those that are normally
attributed to new construction. Though not lessening the inconvenience, new
building systems such as the high speed wifi provided throughout the property
and the 50” flat screen TV’s with included cable have had occasional outages,
and fire alarms or power inconsistencies have been attributed to final
connections and inspections of the building systems for building inspections.
Regarding
Facebook comments, as you can see, there are negative comments posted. Those
comments that have been taken down included email addresses, phone numbers,
personal information, or vulgar language. This is consistent with most major
review websites.
We can only reduce the negative experience of this first
month of the fall semester. This was certainly not our preferred situation, but
the construction team will continue to work 7 days a week to have all of the
construction completed as soon as possible. We promise our residents that, once
fully operational, they will find that this is the best living environment and
experience available serving the students of the University of Houston and TSU.