We had an incredibly frustrating experience with Evanston Place Apartments. My partner and I are graduate students at Northwestern and needed a place for the year. We met with Bo in March who was incredibly kind and helpful and helped us find a spacious (over 850 sq ft) apartment in the building at a great price. We loved the location of EPA - close to campus, central near Wholefoods, CVS, restaurants, etc., and just two blocks away from parks/the lake (we have a dog so this was great). The apartment had also been somewhat updated recently and had a small balcony which we liked.Everything went downhill from the moment we arrived at EPA. We had already paid for a monthly parking pass and they did not have a transponder for us to get in and out of the garage. We had to pay out of pocket for parking for a couple days until the parking company was open to give us one. When moving our stuff in, we noticed that the lock on the main door to our side of the building was broken. It was supposed to lock securely behind us but remained broken for the time we were there. We also noticed the elevator permits displayed had expired in January 2014. One of our FOBs did not work to get into the building from the garage. We woke up at 8am to a jackhammer outside which lasted most of the day. This is all within the first 24 hours of living there. The moment we walked into our apartment we smelled smoke. We initially opened our windows to air out the apartment for the first few hours we were there so we thought that it was possibly coming from outside. We had noticed two people smoking right outside the entrance to the building (which is prohibited according to Evanston's Clean Air Act). However, it did not just smell like smoke, it smelled as if someone was smoking in our apartment. The next day we saw a woman smoking outside of our next door neighbor's apartment in the HALLWAY which explains why the fumes had been so strong in our apartment. We were extremely disappointed with the manner in which the building management initially handled the situation. The manager seemed annoyed that we were presenting this problem to him so close to the end of the workday on a Friday and that there was really nothing that could be done about it until Monday. He contended that the person smoking was a guest of the resident (as if this makes it acceptable) and that he would have to wait until Monday to figure out what had actually happened. This was completely unacceptable to us - we were paying a lot of money to live in a smoke free building and we made it clear that we were not going to be staying in that apartment and be forced to inhale smoke for the weekend, particularly given the fact that I have asthma. These are our rights as a tenant given the terms of our lease and as a resident of Evanston and it is the management's responsibility to ensure that these rights are upheld and respected. His response was, "if I move you to another apartment and you smell smoke again, am I going to have to move you again?" Completely unacceptable, as if it was OUR fault and WE were the ones inconveniencing him, not the woman smoking in the building he is responsible for. The regional manager, Robin, eventually sorted the problem out for us and we were able to leave EPA and move into another apartment building in Evanston (we have been here over a month now and have not had one issue with smokers). She was incredibly helpful and handled the situation like a professional. The whole process took a few weeks to get sorted out with AIMCO. My partner and I are reasonable people and are easy going about most things but this was incredibly unacceptable. If we are going to pay a lot of money for an apartment we expect that the management will uphold their end of the lease. EPA prides itself on being a smoke-free community but that was not our experience at all. We spoke with other residents who complained to us about the smell of smoke as well. While there are certainly positive aspects of EPA (location, large apartments) we would not recommend it. I would also recommend having an honest conversation with the management about their smoking policy before signing a lease there.