Central Park

My wife and I have been living at Central Park for 2 months now and we are happily settled into our new place. If you are new to Beijing like us and need a safe and nice place to live within the CBD, we really don't think it will get much better in terms of the great facilities like onsite gym with pool and spa, green spaces, local shops(lion mart, lohao, the place etc) and good onsite management.

The apartments are generally well built with good fixtures and fittings with well equiped bathrooms and kitchens. The only minor gripe is that most kitchens do not have a dish washer fitted. We also found that a fully furnished apartment in Beijing often does not include alot of the things that many expats relocating would expect. Generally speaking we found apartments in Beijing will not be equipped with crockery, tableware and cooking utensils. These items can be very expensive to purchase so it may be worth shipping over these items if you are shipping stuff over.

We have read some negative reviews about Central Park but we personally have not had any issues so far. We find the onsite management staff and maintenance staff to be excellent. The grounds and buildings are well maintained. In short we would recommend Central Park to anyone looking to live in the CBD area.

Beautiful grounds- across the street is The Place, then lots of lovely little shops on the first level of the complex... restaurants, cafes, hair cutting, banks and ATMs, smoothie shops, an organic supermarket. Then across the street you have 7-11 and plenty of other convenient shops. True there are still places empty- but for the most part you can see they are under construction, and I feel they are pretty filled as it is!

The gym is fantastic, open 7am-10pm.

What I love most of all is the garden/grounds/park in the middle. Most places it's just blah with flat land of grass and children's play area, but this is such a nice place to stroll with grassy pathed areas, sculptures, hills. Just VERY well laid out.

Fixtures are nice- lobby, hallway, and bedrooms.

We moved into a penthouse in Central Park about a year and half. The location is great. It looks good and expat friendly. However, I wouldn't say it has been a smooth ride as we fought constantly with its management office Savills.

I will least a few problems are as follow:

Turnover of reception staff is high and most of them do not speak English!

The reception had lost our keys several times. So do not leave anything at the reception area.

[editor: Deleted name of Savill's employee] who is the Assistant General Manager can barely speak any English. Most of the residents are expats which I find this really funny. In addition, [editor: Savill's employee] ignored my complaint letter altogether. Perhaps it's due to his limited English or lack of professionalism. Either way, none of my problems were addressed properly.

Quality of construction is shameful. Ceilings and wall cracks were showing in the first couple months. Had to get it re-plaster in the first month. Now, after a year and half, cracks are everywhere.

The management office had sent the maintenance into our property without our consent or prior notification. Let's not even mention it took them 15 times to fix the toilet that caused sewer smell in the whole apartment.

The night supervisor came to knock on my door at 10pm demanding me for a dog permit. I think it's a bit rude to just barge him without calling first and especially after 8pm.

We paid 4 times the electricity bill at the management office. Two were not registered with the elec. co. which mean one of the staff member decided to [editor: allegation unsubstantiated].

Management decided to switch from cable to digital TV. Miscalculation of TV boxes which meant that we were without TV for more than two months. How can they miscalculate the amount of TV boxes for each unit?

These are a few examples of what we had to deal with on a daily basis. Unless you have the patient in the world then I would really think twice about living here as the rent is expensive and the service appalling.

We regret we didn't move out soon enough.

Pros
* Buildings are clean (but the green areas outside are not)
* Good maintenance
* Good neighbors/community
* Having few kindergartens which are very close
* Close to ChinaWorld, The Place etc
* Family/children oriented
* Good quality of material in apartments

Cons
* Too expensive (new comers that we know got similar value for almost half the price in other compounds)
* Windows are not being cleaned
* Bad attitude of management for dogs – in terms of stupid letters that are being sent to dog owners, and lack of enforcement of dog stuff cleaning by owners (as the local residents living around Central Park are using Central Park premises as well with their dogs, but they don’t bother to clean after their dogs)
* Trainers at the gym are way too expensive
* Lack of stores at central park. We thought that many of the vacant places will be filled with stores. Most stores are closed
* New cable TV sets are less comfortable as its not connected to all TV ports at home and there isn’t a TV programs guide in English (previously while all ports were connected there were printed papers for HBO, Hallmark, AXN etc
* Lack of central air-filtering/cleaning system
* One lock for the entrance door is not enough. There should be a lock for when we are inside the house.
* Lack of water temperature control system, causing unstable water temperature at showers
* Heating was activated too late (only at the formal state date), 2-3 weeks after all other compounds started heating. It really annoyed us.

Summary
Central Park is a good place for foreigners, but we doubt the value for money.