Residents Steaming About Air Conditioning Problems at Dominion Towers Apartments

As temperatures have climbed past the 90s over the past few days, one apartment complex just off Columbia Pike hasn’t been able to turn on the air — and that has some residents steamed.

Staff at the Dominion Towers Apartments (1201 S. Courthouse Road) were hoping to switch on the air conditioning system this past Thursday (May 3), giving people living in the building’s 330 units their first chance to cool down their homes for the year.

But senior property manager Christle Tate told ARLnow that the system experienced some sort of malfunction, and now she’s waiting on a contractor to work with the A/C’s manufacturer to find a fix for her overheated residents.

“We’re sitting in limbo, just like they are,” Tate said. “I’d never want anybody to sit through this… but, truth be told, we don’t have an answer right now.”

Tate suspects that the problem stems from the system’s “chiller board,” but she says has no idea when the contractor working on the A/C might be able to get it fixed.

“It’s not anything we’re doing on our end to hold up the process,” Tate said.

She says that even executives with the company that owns and manages the building — Alexandria-based Capital Investment Advisors — are in the dark about when the system might work again. Officials at the company did not immediately return requests for comment.

That sort of uncertainty is quite troubling for people living in Dominion Towers, like Jim Eisele, a resident since 2011.

He says the past weekend’s at-times sweltering temperatures made his apartment unbearable without any air conditioning, but he’s even more frustrated with the way the building’s management has responded to the incident.

“The communication has been terrible from when they took over managing the building,” Eisele said. “But obviously that’s more severe when it affects the air conditioning.”

Tate stressed that management has sent out several emails updating residents on the status of the system, and she emphasized that’s as dismayed as anyone about the outage, particularly because she’s concerned about the heat’s impact on many of the building’s older occupants.

But she also conceded that there’s little she can tell Dominion Towers residents except: “Be patient.”

“My residents here are not used to me not having an answer to something,” Tate said. “This is the first time I truly don’t know.”

Photo via Google Maps