The Carlstone

Reviewer RC#0804b

The Carlstone keeps their grounds nice with lots of flowers. The only thing is I wish we had more places to sit outside. It is a new complex and so it's nice. The people are OK, just not as attentive as I would like them to be because we've had people here that died and they don't even know for a couple of days that they're gone. They're getting the food in hand. We've just gotten a new chef and he seems to be good. I have a four-bedroom with a living room and a tiny kitchen. There's a washer and dryer on the premises, which is nice. We have the typical bingo, exercise class, card games, and cornhole. We have no art activities to speak of. The people are pleasant. They have different prices for different people. When they have you come in, they give you a better price, but then they raise it after a certain length of time. I don't know what it's going to be when it goes up next time, and that's what I'm concerned about, but right now, it's OK.

Virginia

I was at The Carlstone. It's strictly an independent living. I was there for three months. It was a very nice facility. It's very clean. The apartment that I had was a one-bedroom, and it was very spacious, and it had a full kitchen and a stackable washer and dryer, so that was very nice to have. It was quiet. You could walk the halls for exercise or around outside. They had a very small exercise room, but it wasn't used very often. They had nice amenities as far as games and things to get people together and socialize. The one thing that was not the best was their food, and they were working to make some changes to their food. They did not take into consideration maybe medical needs that someone had like high blood pressure or diabetes or that kind of thing. Many of the meals many people couldn't eat because of that. They're working on some different things though. I know that they have a committee, and they were working on it with the management people. Mostly everybody was very satisfied with the units. It was a very nice place. It was just not time for me to be there. If I didn't work, if I was there all day long or just in and out occasionally, it would have been a better situation. It was quite high, I thought, but that was what they charged, and it was going up the first of this month. They had given a discount to get people in and then they were going to be going up after your year was up and I just couldn't afford that. I had a one-bedroom, and it was 711 square feet, but they had two-bedroom apartments as well. It was a two-story building, and I was on the second floor. Those on the first floor (the front side and the back side of the building) had an outside door and a little patio area, but the second floor did not have like a little patio or anything. It was just a great apartment like any other apartment building. No balcony or anything, but it was very spacious with high ceilings. You didn't feel cramped. The closet was in the bathroom, and it was so large, you could have put a twin bed in it. So that was very nice. Some of the staff were excellent, others were not. I didn't participate in a lot of activities. I attempted to, but I wasn't there a lot of times when they had activities going on.

Nancy

I went to The Carlstone and my experience was good. The community was good but I eliminated that when I saw what a busy street it was on. The staff who gave the tour was very accommodating and very nice. The rooms were also nice and seemed to be well-kept. They had groups playing cards and dominoes, they had an activity room though there was no one there, it was nice. I've observed socializing going on. Their dining area looked very pleasant.

Penny

The Carlstone Apartments is very nice and very clean. They're very friendly. My mother's room is very nice. In fact, she was the first one to live in there. The staff is great. The services are great. There is chair Pilates. They have a church service and a Bible study weekly. They have bingo, poker, movie room, and a game room that has tic-tac-toe and UNO. They have a small workout room. They have a treadmill and a stationary bike there. They provide meals three times a day in their dining room. They have a maid who's here cleaning now, and the maid service is free. In their dining room, they have a salad bar that's always there for lunch and dinner. They bring meals to her. They will do that if you ask them to. Sometimes, she goes down there, but sometimes they bring it to her room.

Mary

The Carlstone is new and the interior floor is beautiful and modern. It had a dedicated saferoom for tornadoes, which we wanted. It had ground-floor apartments that you could go outside. On their second floor, they had another living area space and their Pilates is up there. We didn't go in there because they were closed at the time. They had additional space on the second floor. There are second-floor apartments. They had an activities room, but they were not able to show it to me that day. They just had a New Year's party in the dining area. They still had glitter on the floor and people were walking around with funny hats on. The apartment was pretty classic and it seemed to be the model that everybody is using. You walk into a modified kitchen area with some kind of flooring and then you go a few feet into an open space that is your living area, then the bedroom and the bath. I am not a carpet person, and I know that's modern for my generation. When I see apartments that are carpeted like this, I'm a bit disappointed. I understand some people like it for falls and things like that, but I have allergies and I'm not very fond of carpets, so that's just a personal preference. It was pretty much the standard one-bedroom apartment, but I've gotten three calls from them that they have apartments available that met my needs. The one negative is they don't have a coffee shop that the other place has. You have to go to the "desk" which makes you feel like you're going to the nurses' desk at the hospital and that's where the coffeepot is. There's no gathering spot where you could sit and drink your coffee and read your paper or anything like that. You pick up your cup, you go someplace else. The exterior is stark. There is no exterior planting. The area where the doors open out to kind of a central courtyard is not gated and secure. Unfortunately, the neighborhood is right on the edge of a major intersection and the fairgrounds can be a high traffic area. To me, parts of it should be gated so that you can feel safe. The staff during the tour was excellent. They apologized that they did not have a lot on the list because they were so newly open and that they had not filled all their apartments because of COVID. They were kind of doing it very slowly, trying to keep everybody safe, so they did not have a whole lot of activities.