Cooper Gramercy

I lived in the building for 3 years. The doormen and super are extremely friendly. The building is in the heart of the Gramercy/Kips Bay area which is close enough to the downtown lower east side bar night life. It was also a close enough building for me to walk
to my office located in Midtown Manhattan. There are a handful of restaurants in the area but overall, I would say that the local restaurant scene is not the best. There is laundry in the building which is super convenient. For a single person in the city, there are grocery stores and local bars nearby. Overall this is definitely a building I would recommend for those fresh out of school and new to the city.

The building decided to raise my rent every year which was unfortunate. It was difficult to keep up with the payments on a salary out of college. The rent increase was more than my pay raises. But that's Manhattan rent for you. For transportation, the downside of the building is that it is only close to the green 6 train. You have to walk a little further to get to the yellow R/W subways. In retrospect Gramercy is not the coolest place to hang out in.

To get the apartment, I simply walked into the building and asked the doormen if there were any vacant apartments. This saved me a broker fee. Though, there is a 'partial' fee which was called a 'Management Fee' which equated to one months rent. I thought this was crap since I found the unit on my own and felt this fee was similar to a broker fee. There is no need for a broker to rent a unit in this building.