The Hub on Campus is one of East Lansing’s newest high-rise apartments located on the corner of Bogue and Grand River.
Students were promised a rooftop pool, a sauna and luxury apartments.
While most of that was fulfilled, some students had trouble moving in and some rooms weren’t even finished.
“This was my first year off campus, actually, so I was kind of excited to live in an apartment,” said senior marketing major Ryan Burk. “That was probably my one big thing for senior year.”
He and his roommates decided to live at the Hub in September 2019 after passing by the construction on Grand River.
“I was just really looking forward to having a nice kitchen to cook my own food, my own room, and having a washer and dryer in the actual apartment is nice,” said Burk. “Like that’s a big upgrade from the dorms.”
In early August, Burk received an email from the Hub’s management team detailing when he and his roommates were allowed to move in.
“Our move in date was August 21st they told us,” said Burk. “They sent out the staggered time list like ‘oh top floors come at 8:30’ and so on and so on by a two-floor basis.”
But at midnight on August 21, Burk got another email from the management team pushing the time back for 10:30am because of a late furniture delivery.
Burk and his roommates stood in line to move in until about 1:30 p.m. that day when management from the Hub told everyone in line to come back at 4:00 p.m. to get their keys to move in.
“It was clear at that point there were some major miscommunication going on,” said Burk.
During that three-hour time block, the Hub was receiving their temporary certificate of occupancy.
“The goal of having folks move in on a certain date is fine, but you have to complete the building so that we can complete our testing and all of our work in order for that to happen,” said East Lansing Building and Code Administrator Scott Weaver. “The temporary occupancy is what stopped the students from moving in simply because things weren’t completed yet.”
Weaver said the Hub may have been behind on completing their building because of the changing weather.
“If you have a bad winter, or as we had a very wet spring, any of that kind of weather-related stuff can certainly cause you problems and of course that accelerates the schedule,” said Weaver. “I think when you are on a campus town and you’re building for student housing, there’s always that august deadline.”
Once Burk moved into his room, he and his roommates noticed several things out of order.
“My roommate didn’t have anything in his closets when he came here, it was just an open hole,” Burk said. “Maintenance came in one day and put one rack up and it wasn’t even the right rack that was supposed to be there, so they had to take that out. I want to say it’s been two weeks that he’s had an actual finished closet.”
The TV in the living room, too, wasn’t properly mounted.
“When we got in here, the tv was just kind of lying there, slanted on the table,” said Burk. “It was supposed to be mounted, and I want to say we finally got that mounted last week.”
Even access to the rooftop pool seemed to be an issue for residents the first week there.
“That Saturday after move in, they hosted a pool party,” said Burk. “I didn’t go to it, but what I’ve heard is they were way above occupancy, there were kids throwing pizza boxes off the roof they were throwing beer bottles off the roof, it just got out of hand. The rooftop was shut down for like a week.”
Burk said maintenance and the team at the Hub have been helpful to fix things in the apartments, and he’s happy with where things stand now.
“In all honesty, it’s been like four weeks now, I’d say a lot of us are like I really like the place,” said Burk. “It’s undeniably nice. I’m happy with everything for the most part now.”