Middle Plaza Apartments - Menlo Park, California

Jorge L.

My wife and I spent 16 months in the Middle Plaza Apartments between August 2023 and December 2024. These apartments belong to Stanford University and are meant for Stanford Staff. They also have a small percentage of units available to the public.

The apartment complex is very beautiful with several amenities. They're higher end, but not luxurious. The apartment themselves seem to have some baffling choices or omissions. For example, the curtains are pretty, but they're extremely light-permeable. If you are on the 2nd floor facing El Camino real (like we were) you will have a lot of street light coming into the apartment. During the day this is not a problem, but if you need darkness to sleep you're going to want to consider wearing a face mask. The bathrooms have very few towel hangers. I installed a few extra hooks to hang our bathrobes. Management asked me to remove them after my move out.

There is free wifi in all public spaces of the apartment which is surprisingly good and stable. I was able to make several video calls using this free wifi. However, my cell phone signal was extremely spotty inside the apartments (my provider is T-Mobile).

During my stay management was extremely permissive and did not enforce common courtesy rules and regulations. The work pods (there are 4 of them on the 2nd and 3rd floor of the A building) are meant to be used on a per-need basis for the entire community, but people tend to leave their computer equipment there indefinitely and claim the spaces as their own, forcing you to work in other spaces that are far less comfortable or public. On several occasions I took people's things out to make use of the spaces and it led to some tense moments. Trash is supposed to be taken out during the evening, between 5-7, and it's often picked up much later. However, some people left their trash early in the morning and it made the hallways smell quite bad on a few occasions. I do realize that there is a lot of medical personnel that works during the 'take-out' hours, so I am not sure what could be done about this. Another point of pain (only during move out) is that people have taken to use the loading docks as parking space. I had to pay an extra $200 to my movers because they had to cover more walking space since they couldn't park their truck in the moving dock.

Your lease affords you one parking space. I felt that the pitch by the apartment was a bit bait-n-switch since it was not disclosed until we had accepted the offered apartment that the lease only included a single car parking space and a second space would be $250/mo.

ProTip: Spare yourself the $250/mo fee and just park your cars in the first level of the garage in the visitor spaces. No one checks if you use those spaces as permanent parking.

Maintenance in general responded quickly to any issues that we had with the apartment. However, things broke often in this complex. The automated garage door broke down on multiple occasions and the hot tub in the pool area also went cold more times than I can count. Speaking of the pool, there are no lifeguards, but management is pretty strict about closing it down at 10:00 PM.

Location wise it is difficult to find anything wrong. There is a Safeway just across the street that has a great variety of food and a pharmacy. You are a 5 minute drive from Stanford's main campus, and about a 15 minute drive to the Stanford Outpatient Clinic Pavillions in Redwood City. My only gripe about the location is that it's a hassle to get on the 101 to go to San Jose or San Francisco since you have to drive through a lot of residential areas. We typically grabbed the I-280 off of Sandhill Rd which was much easier to get to and much prettier to drive through.

Overall we enjoyed our time here. The best thing that I can say about the apartments is that if life were to take us back here we wouldn't hesitate to consider the Middle Plaza Apartments to live in again. They're not perfect, but then again few things in life are.

Monarin U.

We moved in one month ago and it has been wonderful! First of, this is a Stanford-employee only property. You have to be eligible to apply here. Please check the website but other than that it’s just a very lovely place to be. The gym is small but well equipped. The big courtyard always have kids and babies playing. Both and Alex and Priyanka who manage the property have been very helpful. It’s a peaceful community with everything all around.

Ross L.

Expert, fast, and friendly. The service we receive at Middle Plaza is outstanding.

Jay

I'll start by saying this: from the folks in charge of doorstep trash collection at Valley Living (including ELY and PATRICK) to the head of maintenance and repairs, the contracted workers are all very welcoming. The 24-hour security staff are personable and enthusiastic about their work. The facilities are nice, but time will tell if the semi-luxurious feel of the the common space furnishings will be maintained.

Quite unfortunately, the General Manager hired at Middle Plaza leaves much to be desired. ERIANNA was particularly cold and passive aggressive towards me during the movie-in process. One wonders if this behavior extends to her staff, as I briefly noticed an intimidating glare she once gave a leasing agent who had made a small mistake when answering one of my questions regarding my lease.

As a physician, I interact with patients daily and understand the importance of customer service (often referred to as bedside manner). I make every effort to uphold a friendly and enthusiastic demeanor, as it really can impact the patient’s experience in healthcare. I’ve lived in many apartment complexes in many places, but never have I experienced such an unwelcoming demeanor from a General Manager as I did from ERIANNA. Unfortunately, this resulted in a negative move-in experience with a serious consequence to this complex’s overall rating.

GIL was exemplary during the process and maintained the utmost professionalism. He is knowledgable and went above and beyond when answering my questions during (and even after) my virtual tour. He’s friendly, and exemplifies the spirit of the Stanford community.

The other leasing agents seem motivated, although TANIYA might benefit from further training so that she might answer questions regarding the lease agreement more accurately in the future.

Middle Plaza is fine if you like upper middle style luxury. Consider elsewhere if customer service is important to you.

Carolyn B.

Fairly good option (many amenities) but we were provided misinformation by the leasing management on multiple occasions, felt rather biased (provided what turned out to be misleading information, when we called other related resources we were told that shouldn't have happened and the information was incorrect)

Jiro Y.

The new management is very helpful.

Yerim C.

clean and neat

Ralf G.