Students who live at the Edge at Avenue North are about to go over the edge emotionally.
Residents at the Edge were forced to evacuate the year-old apartment building for the second time in less than a week, when a fire on the fourth floor sent students out into the night Monday at around 11:30 p.m.
“As I was walking out, I looked down to the [brick extension of the building] and there was some hazy smoke,” freshman architecture major Steven Boben, a fourth floor resident, said. “All of the fire extinguishers were gone.”
Edge residents previously evacuated the building Friday night after a broken sprinkler in a fourth floor room burst a pipe and seeped water down to the lower floors. The flooding kept students out of the Edge for about three hours and destroyed a few hundred dollars worth of merchandise at Jimmy John’s Gourmet Sandwiches shop, which is located below the building.
Monday night’s fire added another chapter to the less-than-stellar reputation that the Edge has attained since it was constructed in 2006.
- The original move-in date was pushed back from Aug. 14 to Aug. 23, 2006 after construction on the building was far from finished.
- In September, after hearing several complaints about the building, the Temple Student Government Office of University Resources asks Edge residents to fill out surveys online to assess the level of grievances.
- Two months after opening, the Edge terminates College Park Communities, the original management company of the building, after several complaints from residents.
- Took more than a year to establish a recycling program. Recycling bins didn’t come to the establishment until Sept. 24, 2007.
Several students had theories about what exactly caused Monday night’s fire but no official annoucnement was given by Edge representatives, who declined comment on the situation.
However, in both incidents, the Edge offered evacuated residents with free doughnuts and muffins.
Reporter Sarah Fry contributed to this post.