The Monarch Condominium

The staff is fantastic and the location is good. The laundry room and gym are well maintained as is the rest of the building. Overall, it's a really well run building.

The heat/ac units are expensive to run, are inconsistently loud and the management won't replace if you complain about noise (I've had one for 5 years that I can't run if I want to watch TV). It feels kind of transient - lots of people here temporarily for work or school so there's no community feel like in other buildings I've lived in.

Do something about the ac units. I have 2 and one is so loud that I avoid using it on even the hottest days. I was refused a new unit.

Laundry in basement

Neighbors are loud from thin walls

Amazing helpful doormen
Very clean shared spaces
Responsive management
Great layout for apartments
Great sound insulation

A few dryers don't function

We lived there for 6 years and I still think The Monarch is one of the best values in Yorkville compared to similar high-rise buildings but it will depend on what you're looking for. Yes, the Monarch is an older building (built in 1986), so it doesn't have some of the amenities like a roof deck or lounge that newer buildings have. Also, with a condo, you will indeed have to pay larger fees when moving in and out. However, you will almost always get a better deal on rent (even with a broker fee) than you will in a traditional rental building.

PROS:
--All the doormen and porters are great, especially the daytime concierges, Boris and Julian. We rarely had a problem with packages and never had any security issues. Sander, the maintenance person, is very friendly and helpful.
--The fitness room is small and quite limited but it's open 24/7, and if you go at the right times, you may have it all to yourself.
--The building was definitely starting to skew younger (late 20s/early 30s) by the time we left, but there still wasn't really a “bro-y” culture in the building, which you may or may not find to be a plus.
--The pool and jacuzzi were replaced in 2023. The floors and ceilings are solid.

--We certainly saw roaches our share of roaches during our time in the building, but this was mainly in the summertime. Fortunately, when we informed the front desk, they would quickly send someone up to spray.
--In our unit, there was a pipe behind one corner of the bedroom wall that made the bedroom very hot. As a result, we had to run the bedroom AC unit almost all year round, which got very expensive. The AC units in the apartments use a lot of electricity, are loud, and they bring an enormous amount of dust and dirt in from the outside. We had to dust our bedroom furniture daily.
--While the floors and ceilings are solid, the walls separating the units aren't as solid, which we found out in our final 2 years. We had a corner unit, so we only shared our bedroom wall with the neighbors. During our first 4 years, we seldom heard anything, but when a younger couple moved next door during our final two years, we heard them often. Granted, they were unusually loud but at least we seldom heard them after 11p (except for the occasional weeknight party that would go on till 3 am). That's the luck of the draw. But since you can't control who your neighbors will be, you may want a building with thicker walls.
--The neighboring unit also had a door that didn’t align with the doorframe. So when the tenants would force their door shut, it would slam into the doorframe and shake our entire apartment wall, sometimes even knocking pictures off our wall. It also made an incredibly loud noise that echoed through the hallway. Apparently, it was "unfixable."
--This is more of a location than a building issue. While the location is great, know that 3rd Avenue is not a quiet avenue. No matter how high up you are, even with the double-paned glass, you're going to hear a lot of ambulances and fire trucks coming up 3rd avenue, as it's their main route north, but that's city life.

The building seemed to be well run. However, they had recently changed property management companies around the time we left in the summer of 2023 (from La Sala to Douglas Elliman), but communication with the new property manager was not great. Also, we submitted items for sale on the BuildingLink website 5 weeks before moving out. By our move-out day, they still hadn't been approved or posted.

Nice amenities, staff

Pool has been closed for over a year due to Covid

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Building itself isn’t bad. Staff is super friendly and attentive. Amenities are available, but not open 24/7

Stay away from Beni Internazionali USA Inc at all costs. An incredibly awful management company who takes advantage of their tenants, especially after the pandemic. They try and play you every year to raise the rent way more than is appropriate and have absolutely no care for long-term tenants. Alissa is the worst to deal with. Super dishonest and untrustworthy. They own a certain amount of units in the building, so stay away from them if you can. The amenities are also not available 24/7, so it sort of feels like the board is just stealing your money. Why does there need to be a lifeguard on duty for a pool that doesn’t even go to 5 feet…?

Open the amenities 24/7 to your tenants. Your rules are archaic and are discriminatory against people who can’t access them within the timeframe you deem appropriate.