The Lofts at Harmony Mills

For the most part I enjoy living here. Maintenance is all star! I’ve only had one request, but the guy went above and beyond fixing stuff that I hadn’t even told him about. Outside of that they are also really friendly in the halls and one day they saved a baby bird I encountered trapped in between window panes, so that was nice. There are a couple things, however, that I feel make the lofts not quite worth the price tag:
1. Cheap appliances for «luxury» style apartments. I wish the freezer had an ice maker, would obviously prefer gas stove (but that’s understandably unreasonable), and the stupid frigidaire microwave has the world’s most annoying beeps, and on this particularly cheap model nothing can be done to silence them. I cannot explain how deeply I loathe this microwave.
2. Poor sound insulation. We have new neighbors whose dog barks the entire time they are out and when they get back the dog quiets down just in time for the humans to start up. They are prone to MASSIVE blowout fights that we get to hear. It’s almost as entertaining as the bachelor, though, so this could go either way depending mostly on what time it is. I am less enthused about hearing the action upstairs but we won’t get into that.
3. Constant cold air drafts in through the floor from garage below, thus we have pretty high heat bills even though our apt never feels warm. Plus it’s sad when you can get the rest of your body to an okay temp but all the wool socks in the world can’t get your poor little feet warm.
4. The floors are nice to look at, but heinous to clean. You can’t get anything out of the huge gaps in the floor boards. And with the heavy poly coat they just never look sparkling clean like I would like no matter how much I steam mop.
5. The gym is icy in the winter and warm in the summer. I can find enough excuses on my own to not get there, definitely don’t need any outside influencers.
6. The «included» internet cannot be depended on if you have anything important to do. Definitely not capable of streaming, basically just good for getting a little ways into some basic project and quitting from frustration. If quick Internet is a priority for you count on having an additional bill.
7. Lighting is depressing. Not enough in our unit. This is due to the direction our particular unit’s window wall is facing obviously, but the building isn’t situated ideally for many units to have good natural light coming in their solitary window walls. I am a light fiend so I find this challenging.
8. One of the girls working in the management office is totally unfriendly! I don’t know what her deal is, but she is not very nice. Maybe it’s the aforementioned lack of vitamin d getting in her system. Get some supplements gurlll. Residents pay too much for you to snark at them! Everyone else has always been friendly though.
9. Safe walkability of the hood/​presence of appealing food/​drink/​shopping destinations to walk to is a little lacking for the $$.
10. There was a pretty long period when they were between cleaning people when the entrances and hallways were filthy. They let that go wayyy too long. Super thankful it’s back to being fresher smelling now.
11. I’ve only been down to the pool room twice, but one of those times the hot tub was closed. I’d need a much larger sample size to be able to confirm or deny another user’s claim that it is closed all the time without warning, though. I can say the pool area closes at 9 and my husband works long hours so that’s a little early for this to really be a useful amenity for us. Even just one hour later would make a lot of difference.
But it’s not all bad! I LOVE having the garage, laundry in unit, the trash chute, and recycling setup. Super convenient. I’ve only stepped on a rusty nail twice, so I wonder if some may be over exaggerating with the weekly claims. I do think twice is still more than I’d be comfortable with if I had babies crawling around though. The welcoming of all sized pets is a life saver in this region — it’s really the only reason we live here. Pet rent is steep though. Really steep. Knowing what I know now rent would have to drop at least 3 hundos for me to stay here. Also I need a patio. If you are thinking of moving into any of the patioless units ask yourself if it is really worth this much rent to not have easy access to fresh air before you sign a year lease. I’m sure that’s not a big deal to some, but I wish I had considered that more before we signed cause it probably should have been a deal breaker for me.
Overall still a pretty positive experience, I just think there are better values for my personal needs out there.
**Edit: After getting into the thick of apt hunting I realized we’d be staying here if it were just a bit closer to my husband’s job, so maybe there aren’t actually better values. Slim pickings around these parts for people with large dogs!

Was THRILLED to be living here at first… but not so much now. Here are the pro’s & con’s:
Pro’s–
Washer & Dryer
Free Internet, cable & land line service (Which works 80% of the time)
24 hr Gym with decent equipment
The Halls always smell clean and are well maintained
Deliveries are left at your door when you’re not home
High ceilings & large windows
Beautiful & spacious apartments for a reasonable price
Indoor parking (If you can get a spot)
Cons–
Biggest con of all… MANAGEMENT SUCKS!
They sell you a dream to get you to move in, then all dynamics change DRASTICALLY
Very unprofessional, extremely unorganized, nonchalant & dismissive to your needs
Very Good at making broken promises & not doing their diligent duties
They Gossip Like Old Hens
Talks negatively about other residents to other residents which is childish
Maintenance takes 2 years to come do any fixes to your apartment
You’ll be stabbed in the foot by nails at least once a week from the old floor boards
The place is HAUNTED!!! No Jokes… I’ve seen and heard strange sightings DAILY
If you’re not the right «Ethnicity» you’ll be treated as such…
Bottom line… Kinda wish I looked elsewhere before falling in love with the place on site. Now I feel like i’m in a bad relationship but the sex is good… If you get my point. So would I recommend the place to anyone… probably not. I feel uneasy & unsafe here. Wish I could move out… but i’m stuck in a lease now ;-/

These apartments show beautifully, but that’s right where the beauty ends.
Welcome to The Slums at Harmony Mills:
* An easy access location with nothing around.
* A free test to your tetanus shot (hopefully you have one)! The floors are beautiful but they will also be your nightmare. The weather will cause the floors to expand and contract as you go through the year, this causes the needles, staples and pins that workers dropped 100 years ago to work their way up through the floorboards and stab you in the foot as you walk by. We have removed a minimum of 1 pointy object every 2 weeks since we’ve moved in, often more. In addition to that, to cut corners when doing the floors they filled large gaps (missing wood, etc) with bondo, which also works it’s way up creating razor sharp edges to stub/​slice your toes on in the night.
* Your neighbor’s wonderful conversations. The horrid wood floors they decided to keep and «make look pretty» weren’t severed between the apartments. This allows sound to resonate from one apartment into the other. Despite what management tells you they can do to fix it, this is not a fixable problem (at least not without opening the walls up and cutting the floors, which isn’t one of the options they have). This also means the neighbors will hear your conversations.
* Savings! Your rent will be high, but everything else is cheep! The appliances (they’re the garbage kind that look nice, people buy them to stage houses they’re trying to unload), light fixtures, the fans, the cabinets, even the towel hooks in the bathroom. Whoever was in charge of saving money on the construction must have been working on commission.
* Closet doors that don’t stay closed.
* Kitchen lights that don’t do a good enough job at lighting the kitchen and also burn out constantly. They’re 20ft up there so you have to get maintenance to come change them.
* Beautiful, but tiny and somewhat useless kitchen cabinets.
* Fire alarms to keep you safe! They’ll also randomly go off in the middle of the night. The only way to stop them is to call maintenance and have them climb a ladder and unplug ALL OF THEM for the night — seems safe, and no worries they’ll come back tomorrow hopefully to plug them back in. One time this happened the maintenance person claimed it was our cool mist humidifier… Except that a humidifier can’t physically set off a smoke detector. We later found out there is faulty wiring in the building causing the issue.
* Friendly pets! There are a lot of animals at Harmony Mills and they come with dog poop anywhere you see grass, animal hair, urine, MENSTRUAL BLOOD, etc in the hallways and elevators. Most of them are cooped up in apartments all day as well. Add to that, the building layout also enables you to hear them barking from several apartments away.
* A gas furnace! Unfortunately this is the only gas appliance in the apartment and even though you aren’t using natural gas outside of winter, you’ll still be charged $ 40 a month from the utility company, just for having it hooked up.
* Huge beautiful windows that let a lot of lovely light in. They also have a fantastic view of the poorly landscaped area. Saying that they are drafty is an understatement, they pour cold air into the apartment in the middle of winter. Expect expensive bills (we keep our thermostat at 64 in the winter and had utility bills over $ 250)
* They have thermostats in the hallways. However HVAC units were never installed, and there’s no where to put them. The hallways were HOT in the summer. 98 degrees isn’t only a terrible band, it’s also the temperature right outside your apartment door. While we are talking about the hallways, pay attention to how filthy and terrible they are. Especially the west building entrance which looks like you’re walking into a dank basement.
* A Variety of Smells — smells from neighbors beside you and below you will fill your apartment. I hope you like yummy food smells like fish mixed with bathroom odor and cigarette stink (yes, it’s a non smoking building), ahhh-​armoa!
* Free Internet! You’re on a network that connects all of the apartments together, and you’ll be fined $ 250 if you touch the router. In addition the free internet is too slow to stream videos at decent quality.
* Free Cable TV! Which is downgraded to such a poor signal that you are forced to upgrade if you want to watch.
* A freight elevator! Although you’ll never be allowed to use it.
* A pool! With so much chlorine it’ll bleach your hair and melt your eyeballs — sometimes they close it for months without prior notice.
* Gyms! With cheep equipment that is also, often, filthy.
* At least one of the garage doors was busted most of the winter (sometimes which door was broken would change week to week)
* Management! I guess most places have management, but Harmony Mills has special rude management. If they aren’t avoiding your calls they’re making promises to call you and promptly forgetting about you

Overall living in the lofts is a pleasure. I have been a resident for over two years and management does work to ensure that we are happy in our space. Recently — we had Dan from maintenance come in to do some routine things and one slightly unusual thing. We have a three bedroom apartment and have used the third as an office; however, recently we had an elderly relative move in (98 years old) into our third bedroom. We learned that the third bedroom door and latch has a slight stick. For most of us not approaching 100 this slight sticking would not be a problem, but for a woman nearly a 100 years old she can’t manage this and at night she would become locked in her room.
Dan recognized the problem and moved beyond WD40 to fix the lock and work to adjust the jam as well. This task involved some carpentry skills and specific know how. I appreciate how he addressed this issue and made our lives easier. This is just one of many stories I can share about our experience living at the Lofts. Thank you Dan!

We’ve lived here for just over two years and at first, it was amazing… now? Well, to be entirely honest, it feels like we’re living in a very pricey slum.
One star goes to the aesthetics of the complex itself and one star goes to the maintenance staff. My opinion of everything else here has definitely plummeted over the last year or so.
We face the river and it gets incredibly buggy on this side in the warmer months. I vacuum hundreds of dead gnats off the window sills every morning and we have a lot of spiders that come through the seams in our balcony doors (which pop open even when locked in the winter). The positive here is that, due to what I suppose you could consider «immersion therapy,» I am no longer an arachnophobe! The gorgeous 17 foot ceilings are sadly a huge hassle because it’s impossible to reach the cobwebs (which I have to clear from the lower half of the apartment weekly). My living room ceiling looks like a haunted house. I mentioned the bug issue to maintenance once last year and they said they knew it was a problem with all of the Riverview apartments and they’d installed some bug zappers on the exterior that should help. It clearly didn’t. I’ll get into the other unwanted visitors (BATS!!!) later.
The building itself is beautiful, as are the apartments. The maintenance staff (except for one guy who’s pretty terse, condescending and should be avoided like the plague) deserve a gold star because they’re always incredibly friendly and do their best to respond quickly to my requests (even with the dumb stuff like changing light bulbs). When my washing machine started acting up, they replaced it within the afternoon. I even find that the common areas like hallways are usually pretty clean looking, despite the fact that we have a lot of dogs in the building.
The pool area is fine and the staff does seem pretty diligent about keeping it clean and the other communal areas are pretty convenient. My internet connection is pretty spotty but it’s a nice little amenity to have automatically included.
The dog policy, which was a huge reason we moved here, has no restrictions on size/​breed. This is awesome and rare but I have encountered several aggressive pets in living here and I think they should be a little more conservative in what types of pet personalities they accept. There are a lot of children and pets living here and aggressive pets (not breed related) are a real safety concern. My next door neighbor, for example, got a dog who has growled at my kid in the elevator, apparently got a mouthful of the dog down the hall and is muzzled every time I see her.
The indoor garages are excellent, conceptually, but in reality… I’ve had nothing but bad luck in them. Firstly, my car’s paint job has been destroyed due to rust leaking from the ceiling last year. They closed the garage for a week to repair it but after I spent a great deal of money to fix it, it’s happening all over again. It’s pretty disgusting looking.
Last weekend, I was attacked by a bat in the garage. It chased me down and bit me. Maintenance was very sympathetic to the problem (I even had a maintenance guy who I’d spoken to knock on my door the next day and ask if I wanted to be escorted to my car) but even after spending the entire night in the hospital ER to begin the rabies post-​exposure treatment (which is a two week long course of several types of very painful injections including four of them directly into my Achilles’ tendon), I received a call from a person in the office, just letting me know that they’d changed my parking spot to the other garage and that the property manager would be calling me later that day. I never heard from her. I don’t think I’m being a narcissist when I say that I think this situation should have been a priority and that more should have been on the management/​office side of things. Although living here has cured my arachnophobia, the free immersion therapy program here has taught me that I was living a lie. My whole life, I told myself that bats were cute and harmless from a distance, but now I’ve learned that I was just a closeted chiroptophobe! I might have to forgo Halloween this year. And I can certainly forget watching Alfred Hitchcock movies now! I don’t believe the Bat King of Garage A was even caught and I’m not going back down to the garage to find out if he lives on. Sequels are usually pretty lame. After mentioning my ordeal to a few neighbors, one told me that they’d had a bat fly through their apartment and another said that they hear them outside their all night in the summer. My incident was just a nightmarish oversight, but it was handled incredibly poorly, especially considering that it’s clearly an ongoing issue. My neighbor’s six year old daughter is polite enough to ask how I’m feeling, you’d think the office would have the same courtesy to just check up on the situation.

We are currently living in our second apartment here at Harmony Mills. Our first apartment was in the North Lofts and I honestly would have given it 4 stars over there but we are very happy with our new apartment across the street in the West Lofts, Mill 1. I would just like to say before going into the differences between the two apartments and the pros and cons that the office & maintenance staff have been absolutely wonderful. We are a family of 4 with 2 children with Autism and we have had some special needs/​requests with unforgiving time constraints and the Harmony Mills staff has been wonderfully accommodating.
WEST LOFTS Mill 1 — 3 Bedroom 2 Bathroom Apartment
PROS
Patio — There are only 4 – 6 units that I know of that have their own private patios. Ours is directly connected to our apartment so it’s completely private and pretty big, roughly 9 ft by 40 ft.
Updated features — Mainly updated appliances, granite countertops.
Parking Garage — It is shared with several other units but it’s far easier to access your parking space vs the larger parking garage below the building, the spaces were a little tighter in the garage below the building.
Convenient Guest Parking — Right outside the entrance of our building and we’re very close to the entrance.
Spacious — 1900 sqft.
Newer floors — Easier to clean.
Windows on each side of our apartment — Brings in a lot of sunlight and feels brighter.
CONS
Packages — Not really the fault of Harmony Mills but for some reason many people (Pizza delivery guys, grocery delivery guys & UPS) have a hard time finding our apartment and whenever UPS has a new driver they can’t seem to find our apartment. A little annoying but it seems to be smoothing out lately.
Electric Cooktop — I would consider gas to be more luxurious. Not my favorite but it works.
NORTH LOFTS — 2 Bedroom 2 Bathroom Apartment
PROS
High Ceilings — Probably around 14 – 15 ft, I never actually measured but they’re much taller than my current ceilings now (9.5 ft), makes for a HUGE feeling apartment.
Spacious — Generous at 1500 sqft for a 2 bedroom.
Parking Garage — Each unit is only allowed one garage space but they were kind enough to let my husband have an empty space in addition to the spot for my car until someone moved into that apartment. Made the winter months far more tolerable for my husband.
Upgraded features
Fast Maintenance — Again, may be due to the seasons with less on their plate in the winter. Great nonetheless.
CONS
Old Floors — While they are beautiful these had some very unfavorable drawbacks. We were on the first floor and the floors had very large gaps that allowed air from the parking garage to shoot up through the floors. Our heating bill was about $ 80 more than it usually was in our other apartment in Troy. Also, our kids would constantly pull needles & nails out of the large gaps between the floorboards even though I tried to vacuum out every inch several times over. The gaps also made it very hard to clean the floors if something was spilled I couldn’t really clean properly.
Electric Cooktop
Inconvenient guest parking — Our guests would have to walk a long ways to get to out apartment, we were the furthest apartment from the front door so we had to start having people come to the side of the building and we’d let them in.
HARMONY MILLS OVERALL
Sound Proofing — I think the sound proofing was well done when they remodeled. I’ve never heard anything but light thuds when they’re walking upstairs but no talking, TVs or music. The Troy apartment we had (The Hudson) had TERRIBLE noise issues and I would constantly get complaints that my children were too loud but these apartments seem to be great. I’ve only had one noise complaint from the neighbor above us in our first apartment here at the harmony mills and that was when my son was screaming and crying during a tantrum. Other than that my current upstairs neighbor has told me she barely hears anything at all, only thing she heard was a large bucket my son was throwing around one day.
Fast Maintenance — Again, may be due to the seasons with less on their plate in the winter. Great nonetheless.
Lease Terms — They have plenty of lease term options which make it very convenient for families like ours that move a lot for work and they also have a buyout option but it’s something crazy like $ 7000. Short term leases can be VERY pricey, as much as $ 500 for a Month To Month lease, still worth it in my opinion. Also, if you are nearing the end of your lease know that if your move out includes just the first day of the month you will have to pay rent for that entire month.
These apartments have the appearance of high end apartments without being truly luxury but it would honestly be hard to do much better at this price point. Final walk through went very well on our first apartment, I’ve had landlords nickel and dime us but they were very forgiving. We LOVE living here and I wish I could pick up this apartment and move it with us wherever we go.

Having lived in many apartment buildings, this is definitely very affordable, and had great amenities. We were sad leave!
Pros: No amenities fees, with several indoor gyms, a sauna, and an indoor poor and whirlpool to chose from. We had free indoor parking for one car, and for mine I never had any problem with finding a space outside, ever. The inside of the lofts were always well maintained, and maintenance calls were returned same day, always. The rent we considered to be affordable, and the galley kitchen and pantry had more than enough space for our needs. Some units also have an attic, plus a storage unit, at no additional cost (though some do charge). All the units had huge ceilings and windows, and many of the older lofts also have original flooring from the mill. That was pretty neat. The cohoes police patrol the area ALL THE TIME, so I always felt very safe, even late at night. You are also relatively close to a grocery store, drug store, fast food, and a gas station, with Clifton park just being 15 minutes down the road for anything else.
Cons: the windows do have a bit of draft in the winter, that is for certain. We never experienced the high heating bills referenced in earlier reviews though, but we kept it pretty cool. In the winter, due to the nature of the roof, there was tons of ice that have to be navigated when walking around outside. With that said though, it is upstate New York, so it kind of comes with the territory.
Overall, we loved our time here. Best apartment we had lived in so far. We got out security deposit returned within a few weeks after moving out as well.

We still love living here at Harmony. Very convenient however, now that we are coming into our first Winter here, it’s become a bit disheartening. Saying I have a draft coming through my windows and up between the cracks of our floors is an understatement. Wind is blowing into my apartment. Our electricity bill has gone from $ 200 to $ 280 and we are in a 1250sqft unit. My 2 story, 2190sqft home utility bill never exceeded $ 250. They don’t put weatherstripping on the entry doors so the heat or AC can aid in heating/​cooling the hallways since they keep the hallway thermostats turned off. I’m literally sitting on my couch feeling the draft from my windows push my heat out of our apartment. These are not original factory windows either. They’re new, custom designed so this is unacceptable. My husband and I are weather stripping our front door and duct taping our windows today and will be requesting our floors get resealed next week.

Moving into the West Lofts from Manhattan, what was promoted to me by the salespeople in the office was that this was like a «luxury Manhattan-​style» bldg. Unfortunately, the only thing, in my opinion, luxurious about the «Lofts at Harmony Mills,» is the rent. The apartments are large, spacious and adequately appointed with next to no cabinet space in the kitchen, insufficient lighting everywhere, and NO light in a 4′ deep walk in closet. Great closet space, no light; the electrician who did the wiring who had to be called because the smoke alarms kept going off commented that the original plans suggested lights, but, surprise! these were killed by the management company. I wonder why? There is cheap track lighting 20′ up in the kitchen, and sparsely, scarcely spaced lights throughout. There has been nothing but problems in this new bldg, w iffy wifi/​internet service throughout the month of June-​First light gave the tenants a $ 20 Starbucks giftcard; iffy elevator service to the only elevator which is about a 40′ walk from our door. (I wonder what it’s going to be like when the place fills up???) There are people who moved into this bldg in March, it is now mid-​August at this writing, and there is still no landscaping. The entrances continue be flooded every time it rains. Every contact with the management office results in unreturned calls and unanswered emails. But, they are quick to list and offer new charges. I’m still perplexed about why one is charged $ 20/​mth PER DOG, and $ 15/​mth PER CAT. It does not seem to be related much to the animal hair left throughout the hallways, or the pee tracks left from accidents in the hall and the elevator. I lived in a luxury bldg in Manhattan for 20 yrs at W. 15thSt./6^th Ave and was never asked to pay a surcharge or damage fee for an accident which may have occurred whether it was perpetrated by me or my dog. If my dog had an accident in the lobby, it was cleaned up before I even had a chance to take care of it. We are told that an extra covered parking space would be $ 140.00/mth extra; sorry, but we’re practically in the middle of nowhere across from a gigantic! vacant lot. Seriously, we could start a farm across the street to pay for the extra parking space. The hallways look cheap w/​cheap carpeting, and the entrance looks unfinished. Is that supposed to be a «loft» kind of look? We fell in love too quickly with the lovely apartment with the giant windows; I doubt that we will renew for another year.

Great style for this old mill turned apartment complex! Varnished dark real wood floors spacious loft ceilings and many different sizes of apartments to choose from make this a great place to live. The two bedroom will be in the 1600 range but for how new they are this is a comparable price.
the two bedroom even has a spacious «attic» space with a pulldown stair ladder. cool!
style and finish:5starts
price:3 stars
location:4 stars (very classis and has historic feel but also super close to albany)
managment/tenents:4stars
overall 4 stars!
At the very least if you need a condo/​apartment in this area these are worth checking out!