Bell Cherry Hills, an apartment complex just over Denver’s southern border in Englewood, advertises itself as “a haven of pure comfort where every element is designed with care.”
The complex has more than 300 units and boasts a fitness center, a dog park, a controlled-access garage, a ski and bike repair shop, and a “sparkling swimming pool.”
But according to residents, the garage and apartment complex doors are often broken, leading to break-ins and thefts. Trash overflows. An elevator is broken. Fire extinguishers are smashed or missing, fire alarms go off regularly and electrical wires are exposed in the garage.
Until recently, a bike lock closed the pool from the outside, creating a fire hazard.
“Most of my stuff was a lot of just death by a thousand cuts, tiny frustrations that have built up and up and up,” said Eliza Hammond, who has spent the past two years trying to get management to fix a number of issues at the complex.
Recently, she started reaching out to her neighbors.
“The more I started to talk to other people on the property, I don’t even have it as bad as everyone else does.”
Complaints at the complex come as the management company, Bell Partners, Inc., looks to continue expanding nationwide.
The North Carolina company already owns and manages 10 properties in Colorado, many of which include online reviews complaining about similar issues to those at Bell Cherry Hills.
In 2023, residents at Bell’s Broomfield complex complained about wildly fluctuating utility bills.
Bloomberg reported in 2023 that the company raised $1.3 billion to buy apartments across the country, targeting 14 cities, including Denver.
According to a press release from the company in 2023, it plans to focus on multifamily apartments and “investment in transitioning neighborhoods.”
Representatives for Bell Cherry Hills and Bell Partners, Inc., did not respond to Denverite’s requests for comment.
Residents at the Englewood location said they were shown nice apartments when touring the property — only to find a different reality after moving in.
Hammond said that when it snows, the sidewalks outside the leasing office and around the front of the complex are completely shoveled. But when residents turn the corner, the sidewalks leading to the main buildings are snow-packed and icy.
“Gorgeous leasing office, all of the doors and locks getting into the front property work, but if we walk over to Building B, there's broken door handles off there,” she said. “They've told me, essentially, because it locks and latches, that they don't really have any plans on replacing it.”
Hammond said her washing machine was broken at one point for three weeks, and one of the elevators has currently been broken for six weeks.
Growing frustrations pushed her to put flyers up around the complex, including on her own door, trying to connect with fellow residents about the maintenance issues at the property.
“Of course, they rip all of those down right away,” said Hammond, who shared with Denverite dozens of documents showing issues at the complex and gave a reporter a tour of the complex.
Since posting her flyers, Hammond has heard from a number of neighbors about unsafe conditions at the complex, including car and bike thefts.
Because garage and other ground-level doors lead directly to apartments, broken doors can lead anyone right inside. A car break-in in the parking garage was Hammond’s final straw.
She said broken glass covering the ground after the theft remained in the parking garage for weeks.
“I had four or five rounds of emails back and forth with them saying ‘Hey, this car has been in here with a busted out window for months and the glass hasn't been cleaned up,’” she said. “And they just would email me back saying, ‘I've said maintenance out, I've taking care of it.’ And then I'd be standing right there reading these emails in the broken glass.”
Jacob Kramer, who connected with Hammond through her flyers, said he also worries about the parking garage. He said management fixed one of the doors only for it to break again a week later. Kramer also said he found exposed wires and broken electrical piping in the garage.
“The problem with electrical is you may not have an issue or a spark or something right where that is, that could go all the way through the wiring and go into a hallway and cause an arc or spark that can start to fire, and that makes me nervous as someone who’s worked in electrical,” said Kramer, who used to install solar panels. “It's sketchy. It's scary.”
Meanwhile, rent at the complex has gone up.
Hammond pays around $1,700 for a 700-square-foot one-bedroom. But she said that adds up to more than $1,800 per month after fees, which include a $30 monthly trash fee for a service that no longer operates at the complex because of fire hazard concerns.
Kramer said he pays around $2,500 for a two-bedroom. Both residents said their rent has gone up by at least $100 since moving in more than two years ago.
“As our rent has gone up, the quality of the complex has gone down,” Kramer said.
Elsewhere in the country, Bell Partners Inc. has faced a number of lawsuits from tenants and state attorneys general.
Valued at more than $18 billion, Bell Partners, Inc., owns and manages apartment buildings across the country, including in California, Texas, North Carolina, Virginia, Georgia, Florida, Washington and Washington, D.C. The company has also been sued in a number of those states.
In Austin in 2014, the company settled with a number of tenant and disability rights groups for $200,000 over claims of discrimination against deaf tenants.
In Virginia, the company was one of 29 landlords sued by the state in 2021 for refusing Section 8 vouchers.
Also that year, tenants in North Carolina won a $4.75 million class action settlement claiming the company charged them illegal eviction fees.
And in November 2023, the Washington, D.C., Attorney General sued Bell Partners, Inc., and 13 other landlords claiming the companies colluded to inflate rent using a property management software.
Fed up with waiting months for maintenance, both Kramer and Hammond are planning to move out early.
Hammond said she sent management a demand letter and that they waived her early move out fees, which could have cost her thousands of dollars.
But even moving out will be complicated because of the broken freight elevator.
“I will be renting a very long bed pickup truck that could fit my couch and bed, so I can get it up to the parking garage, so I can get my stuff out, on account of the elevator not working, and there not being a timeline for it to be fixed,” Kramer said.
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