Heritage Place, 820 5 Avenue SW, Calgary

If I had unlimited time and words, I would adequately be able to describe why you should literally live anywhere else in Calgary than subject yourself to the abject horror of living in the nightmarish hellhole that is Heritage Place. And if I had to sum up in just 2 words why it is literally a better idea to get a sleeping bag and live on the sidewalk by crackmacs than rent here, I would use the following two words: Building Manager.

The building manager of 820 5 Ave SW and I use that term in the absolute loosest way possible because this man is incapable of managing anything. How he got this job, I do not know. I am sure there was some sort of nepotism involved. This terribly incompetent and infuriatingly unprofessional man-child is incapable of managing the simplest of tasks, let alone a 20-storey building full of tenants he has absolutely no regard for. That’s right, he, or anyone from fireside properties for that matter, does not have any regard for the general well-being of the tenants of this building. His favourite words in the English vernacular and probably the only ones he can string together in his primitive underdeveloped brain are “There’s nothing I can do about it.” If I had a dollar for every time, I heard him say these 7 words to literally any problem I ever had in the 2 years that I’ve known him, I would have enough money to buy this building and hire a better manager.

I’ve lived in this building for 4 years now and I’ve actually had a pretty nice time here. The former building managers were this British dude and his wife, and they were quite nice and friendly. But then everything changed when ****** was appointed the building manager in 2019. While his level of incompetence and unprofessionalism is not exactly quantifiable, here are a few of his greatest hits:
1. My lease terms were usually for 6 months and I signed a new one at the beginning of every March and September. Over the 6-month period between March 2020 and September 2020 while I had signed a lease for my apartment, he failed to provide me with a copy of my lease during the entirety of that term which is actually illegal in Alberta and only gave me the copy in September at which point I had signed a new (and fortunately my last) one, presumably to just avoid any legal issues. Think about that for a second. He completely forgot to give me a copy of my lease for 6 months.
2. He left an industrial shop vac in the middle of the already tiny hall in my single bedroom apartment for several months. This man is literally incapable of following through with anything unless you remind him 20 times.
3. The day I was moving out of this building, there were some junkies with their drug kit laid out in the lobby and I shit you not they were shooting up heroin in the lobby of the building. This is advertised as a “family building.” My girlfriend’s dad came to help me move and I bet he’s super glad knowing his daughter spent much of her time in the past couple years in this place. I used to constantly run into super shady people in the lobby and elevator. Hey ******, ever heard of doing background checks?
4. This apartment seldom provides adequate heating. To compensate for this, he gave me a portable heating unit, which is, again illegal. According to the rental laws of Alberta, there is a certain threshold of temperature for an apartment that a landlord is required to provide and this place 100% was below that threshold on multiple occasions. Anyways so ****** gives me this space heater and then just leaves it in my apartment for a year. Over the summer I asked him several times to pick it up to which he said, “ok I will” and then he didn’t.
5. I am about 80% sure certain parts of this building are not up to code. Being right above the boiler room I am pretty sure I have been, in numerous occasions, close to death and ****** just never told me about it. In the January of 2020, for around 3 weeks to a month (my memory is a bit foggy as I try to repress that entire month of my life) my bathroom was not functional. That’s right I literally could not use my bathroom to shit or piss in because some pipe exploded somewhere. To provide the ability to use a bathroom is one of the obligations of a landlord to their tenant. So once again, you guessed it, this was not legal (I’m guessing you are sensing a pattern here).
6. During that aforementioned time ****** gave me the key to an apartment on the 14th floor which was vacant at the time to use their facilities, so I basically had to take an elevator up 12 floors whenever I needed to shit, piss or shower. Then HE FORGOT that he gave me that key and to this day, one year later, I still have it. If anyone has been living in unit 1407 during the year 2020, know that I have had a key to your apartment this whole time and could’ve have just strolled into your home in the middle of the night and taken all your stuff if I wanted to. So, maybe rethink if you wanna keep living there now.
7. Speaking of theft and the main reason why I chose to write this review today; the morning of the day I was about to move out I decided to wash my couch covers because well I’ve been using them for about 3 and a half years and I never washed them. When I came back, I found that my upholstery cover was stolen from the wash. This was at 6 am. When I emailed ****** about it guess what he replied? Did you guess? Well, you’re wrong. He didn’t reply to my email because if he replied, that would mean that he is professional and actually competent at his job, but we’ve established that this man is far from professional. Anyways, when he didn’t reply to my email and I called him 4 hours later to follow up, guess what he said to me. Ding! Ding! Ding! You got it: “There’s nothing I can do about it!” With a nice little dash of “there are no cameras in the laundry room” ok first of all. Did you even try to do something about it? Because if you gave the tiniest ounce of effort at your job, you’d come to realize that there actually are a few things you could’ve done in that situation. Did you check the cameras in the lobby to see if the perpetrator left with my upholstery cover? It’s a 3-seater sofa with a width of 251 cm, it’s f***** huge, bud and if someone tried to leave the building with it, it would be pretty f**** noticeable. Did you check the dumpster? This is a pretty shitty building and the people here are pretty shitty, maybe someone wanted to pull a nasty prank. I mean we already know that you do literally zero background checks on the kind of people you allow to rent here. Did you make rounds of the floors? Maybe someone tossed it in the stairwell. Did you do literally ANYTHING before you decided that there was NOTHING you could do about this matter? Also, why aren’t there cameras in the laundry floor, dipshit? Useful tip to current and potential tenants of Heritage Place who are too busy or broke to buy new clothes: apparently, the laundry room is open season for any and all of your clothing needs. Just grab anything from the washers at any time, free of consequence because management is too stupid to do anything about thefts.
8. I got lonely and super depressed after living in this building for several years and wanted to get a puppy towards the end of 2019. When I brought it up with ******, he said that there is a no pets policy in this building which was odd to me because this f**** himself owns a pitbull named Sam and he lives in this building. I am also 99% sure there is a possum or raccoon or some sort of feral animal living in one of the higher floors. I’ve seen it in one of the fire evacs.
9. I live on the 2nd floor and have a large, shared balcony with everyone on my floor and often people from above throw random shit to our balcony which is not allowed as per the building rules but of course ****** here has no way of enforcing that rule or any rule for that matter because as we’ve established, he can’t do anything about anything. People throw shit like birdseed to feed the pigeons, beer bottles, breadcrumbs, all sorts of nice things.
10. One of the other rules of this building that ****** is incapable of enforcing is the prohibition of smoking marijuana. That’s right it’s legal to smoke weed in Canada but not in heritage place Calgary. Just kidding though because literally everything is legal in this building because people are regularly shooting up heroin in the f***** lobby and management literally can’t enforce any rules except letting you adopt a puppy. That one is a big no-no!

In conclusion, to management: fire this man. To you, the reader: keep looking. I’m guessing the reason why you’ve come across this review is because you’re thinking about renting here. DON’T. Honestly, there are literally tons of better buildings around the area. Just walk a few feet to your left and you’ll find Sundance Apartments. It’s much cheaper and much better for your mental health because you won’t have to deal with an asshole who insists on wearing tank tops in the office but never shaves his pits and also doesn’t give a fuck about whether everything in your apartment and the building is in good working order despite that being the only reason why he is in the building in the first place.