Riva on the Park

Office staff is warm and inviting. Maintenance was second to none. Katie helped with the move in process and was an absolute joy to work with. Ryan has been an intricate part of the move in process as well. Seems as though he plays a strong role in the office as well as the maintenance department. As I’ve not been here too long and I’m still getting to know the place but we couldn’t be off to a better start. Good job Riva

Beautiful, spacious apartments with fantastic building amenities in a desirable location. The staff is polite and responsive when needed. You will not regret renting here!

Excellent place to live in with friendly staff and very attentive maintenance people.

I just moved from Riva into downtown, after my 14 month lease ended. Here are some pros and cons:
Positives:
— I lived on the 3^rd floor in an 800 sq ft 1 bedroom, the living room was huge!
— Great views and great quiet area
— Maintenance handled all requests ASAP
— Rarely heard my neighbors, other than traffic, apartment is very very quiet
— Parking ($ 140/​mo) was reasonable and streetcar is right outside for any downtown commuting
— Staff seemed friendly
— Great area for runners
Negatives:
— I like fresh air and kept my windows open a lot, but being on the 3^rd floor and with Riva so close to the freeway, traffic noise was too loud for open windows, even on the weekends.
— 3^rd floor living with open windows = smelling the smoke of all the smokers from downstairs
— Seems like trash chute was down a lot
— Recycling has been full most of the time I tried to recycle paper
— I love the fact that they have a ²⁴⁄₇ gym, but their treadmills and elliptical could use an upgrade.
— Walking from Riva into downtown takes about 45 minutes
If you’re looking for a spacious, quiet apartment in a quiet area, this is your place. It’s just far enough from downtown to feel like you’re away from the city chaos, but close enough to experience the urban living.

Whether or not I’d recommend moving to Riva relies entirely on one thing: do you own a vehicle? If you do –whether it be a car, bicycle, scooter, or whatever– I wouldn’t hesitate in recommending the place. If, however, you don’t own any of those things and rely on public transportation and walking, I’d say you might want to look elsewhere. To put it simply, the public transportation in this area is horrible. There’s only one bus that runs here and it runs once every 30 minutes. There’s also a streetcar, but it’s ridiculously slow, unreliable, overly cramped, and tends to stop running after 10:30 P.M. Whenever I have friends visit from out of town, they’re always baffled by the mere existence of the streetcar because it seems so inefficient and outdated.
Unfortunately, the area itself doesn’t have much to offer as there are no grocery stores within walking distance. There’a a small, overpriced convenience store that mostly sells soda and junk food, but no real grocery store. The closest ones are Safeway and Target, which are about 1.5 miles away. The Safeway is about a 40 minute walk, but even on the Streetcar it usually took me at least 25 minutes. I moved here in the summer and quickly learned that getting ice cream from the grocery store wasn’t even a possibility because there was no way I would ever get it back in time before it melted. It was such a disappointment because the two apartments I lived in prior to moving here both had grocery stores within a 12 minute walking distance.
Of course, if you own a car, none of that is a concern to you. You wouldn’t have to rely on the horrible public transportation and you’d probably be able to drive to Safeway within 7 minutes. So yeah, most of my complaints are stuff that I wouldn’t be facing at all if I owned a car, hence why I recommend this place for vehicle owners. Lastly, I should point out that Riva obviously has no control over the public transportation, and thus shouldn’t be blamed for it. I am not deducting any points from them for this because it’s something that’s completely out of their control, but I just felt it’s something potential renters should know.
My only other complaint is that the apartments (or at least mine) can become extremely hot and humid, even in the winter. It was so surreal seeing the outside temperate at 37 degrees, but the temp inside my apartment was 80 (and no, I didn’t have the heat on.) The reason is because the sun is ridiculously bright and beats down right on my apartment window, so much so that the outside of my window actually sizzles. On some days, I can’t even open the blinds because the sun is so bright. I’ve never had this experience in any other apartment building, so I guess I was just unfortunate enough to get an apartment that is directly in front of the sun all day. The air conditioning is pretty poor and does very little to cool the place down. This past summer, I had the AC on full blast and went around with my shirt off and I was still sweating profusely on a daily basis.
Now that I’ve gotten the negatives out of the way, let’s focus on the positives. One huge positive is that the apartments are pretty sound-​proof for the most part. I’ve lived here for a little less than a year now and I don’t think I’ve ever heard any of my neighbors. I occasionally hear stuff in the hallway (though it’s mostly quiet), but never anything from the two apartments next to mine. Whether or not an apartment is sound-​proof is of the utmost importance to me — in fact, I’d say it’s probably the most important factor. I once had the misfortune of living in a terrible apartment where the walls were paper-​thin and I could hear everything my neighbor said, so once you’ve lived in those conditions, you start to appreciate the excellent sound-​proofing that places like Riva have to offer.
The neighborhood is a nice, crime-​free area that doesn’t have any loud noises near-​by. There are no bars or nightclubs or anything like that, so you don’t have to deal with obnoxious loud music playing at all hours of the night or drunk people puking on the sidewalks. Most of the residents seem to be over the age of 30, and there are a lot of elderly people in the area. They aren’t the most neighborly bunch, but hey, at least you don’t have to worry about old people stealing your stuff.
I could probably write at least 8 more paragraphs about this place, but I don’t want to take up too much space, so I’ll just finish by saying they also have a great gym and lounge area on the 5^th floor, a friendly cleaning staff, built-​in utilities, and an on-​call maintenance team. Apartments are nice-​looking and I find my studio to be quite cozy. There are also some decent restaurants/​food carts near-​by too. Recommended.

Despite a few positives, overall i would not recommend this apartment complex.
I lived here for 8 months.
positives
— quick maintenance resolutions
— great view
— minimal neighbor noise
— reserved parking spot — not too expensive.
— great location
— sw waterfront is clean and fun.
— the folks cleaning the lobby and elevators every day were super sweet and nice.
— allows pets.
— great eco terrance with bbq, and gym.
— nice neighbors
— nice community website
negatives
–office staff, horrific. From receiving incorrect information to poor attitudes and everything-​in between. Huge turn around in the office — in 8 months i met 6 different people. no consistency.
— no concierge — a desk with paper advertising does not count.
— parking garage was extremely dirty
— trash shoot worked 70% of time.
— trash compactor broken or horrific smelling in the lower floors and elevator 20% of time.
— tried to do a lease take over — nearly impossible with the process that is set in place. wasnt able to rent the apt to the 10+ people who responded to the craigslist ad, but the office was able to rent other apartments to some of those folks.
— horrible lease break experience. — lots of misinformation here.
— terrible dog smell in the lobby and elevators when it rains.
— when i moved out there was a new large pit bull in the building despite that breed being on the black list.
— neighbors smoking in their apartments and all of that smoke ending up in our apartment. this happened 10 – 15 times. despite multiple complaints, was not resolved.
That pretty much covers my experience.

A good friend lives in this building. Awesome South Waterfront location. Wonderful for a dog lover. Not so much if you don’t like them. Seems like everyone living here has at least one dog if not more. The apartments are really not that big for the size of dogs I see people walking in and out of the building. Seems kind of sad to me to keep such large animals in small confined spaces. There is a park right across the street that everyone takes their animal to relieve themselves. Convenient bathroom for the dogs, kind of gross park for a human to use.

We love it here. No complaints at all. It’s high rise living, near everything. The staff are friendly, helpful, and courteous. The main reason we live in the hood is for proximity to OHSU, everything else is a bonus. I highly recommend this building unless you are difficult and rude, if you are, please stay out of my building.

Been here two months:
Pros:
* Very quiet. I have a neighbor who plays music constantly and I can’t hear him when he closes his door.
* Professional staff — it’s a corporately run building so if you’re used to a more friendly relationship with a landlord then this isn’t for you. I strongly prefer professional, cut to the contract management. You know exactly where you stand.
* Responsive management — they are responsive to questions and handle maintenance on a ticketing system, which is nice because it is not only documented and you know the status of your request
* Clean — impressive considering the large pet population
* Views — we have a non-​riverfront view, and still we enjoy looking down at the Elizabeth Caruthers park, the Portland skyline, the OHSU tram and the Ross Island bridge. We are quite happy with this.
* Washer/​dryer in the unit — I can’t believe how much I missed this when we had a place where it was just on the premises. It’s frankly nice being able to leave your stuff in there and not worry about another resident moving/​touching your stuff
Negatives:
* Parking — it’s cramped even for smaller vehicles
* Dogs — high pet population. If you can’t stand the smell of dogs, this place isn’t for you. They are pretty much everywhere. I love dogs myself, but I can see how that would be an issue for others
* South Waterfront — not a negative to me, but really, there’s nothing here. There’s a Subway, Bambuza (Vietnamese restaurant) and Soho (Japanese restaurant) for dinner dining options. There’s a single coffee house, Rilassi. If you like dining out or going to bars, the South Waterfront really feels more like a suburb than a place close to downtown.
* Closest food stores are Zupan’s (expensive) or the Burlingame Fred Meyer’s which is 2 miles by freeway.
My opinion, the positives far outweigh the slight negatives. The best indicator of resident satisfaction is the large number of long-​term residents here. Also, last I spoke with the leasing staff, the building currently has a 98% occupancy rate.

We just recently moved out… sadly. Mainly because we need more room as we are pregnant and need a home office and now a baby room. The staff is amazing! Robin, Lindsey and Aaron are rock stars! They will do whatever needs to get done to make it a great living environment. Our unit overlooked the river and I had a view of Mt. Hood from my desk. I wish we still lived there and recommend the building to anyone looking to move into a quiet, urban environment with FREE streetcar access. Have any questions for me; post here!

This was a very good place to live. Some notes after a year here:
Positives:
— Stunning views
— Granite countertops and hardwood floors in the kitchen are *nice*
— Large 2^nd bedroom (as opposed to ‘large master, tiny 2^nd’ which is common)
— Very soundproof (I turned up my music LOUD one day and went over to my neighbor’s place… couldn’t hear a thing)
— Maintenance reqs always handled ASAP
— AC/​Heat works very well… 5 minutes or less to get it to your temp
— Washer/​dryer are in the bathroom (where they belong IMHO)
Negatives:
— AC puts out a lot of white noise, even when off. This can be a good thing if you like it… I got used to it pretty quickly.
— Electric range /​oven… I really missed cooking with gas
— Concierge is not 24÷7… minor, but ²⁴⁄₇ service is available at other luxury apts.
My only reason for moving out was to experience living in another neighborhood in Portland. If you’re considering South Waterfront, this building is worth a look.

Rents seem fair — no doubt some screaming deals in this place with all the current concessions on the market! Some good prices for a brand new unit. Quiet area. Great if you work at the hospital and can commute up the tram.