MTCA memo shows improvement, says high school English teacher

April 9, 2009 – While a recent memo from residential property management – about elevators being inspected by the city – had residents at Marina City concerned about delays, Marina City Online saw it as an opportunity to see if employees of Draper and Kramer had improved their spelling and grammar.

Last year, memos from the management office were so notoriously bad, MCO handed in an August 8 memo to a high school English teacher, who gave it an F and said it was “a horrible memo.”

Was there any improvement? The April 7 memo got a B. “It looks good,” said Karolyn, an English teacher at a college prep high school in Chicago, who was reached on spring break. “I’d give it a B, but I would follow a strict rubric [scoring tool].”

Click on image at left to see the memo and corrections.

Karolyn had five corrections, a remarkable improvement from 15 errors we counted in the August memo. Karolyn counted 20 items in the earlier one-page memo that were either incorrect or could stand improvement.

The memos were written on letterhead of Marina Towers Condominium Association. MTCA pays Draper and Kramer a monthly fee of $10,287 to manage the residential property at Marina City.

Unfortunately, there was an issue with days of the week mentioned in the more recent memo and it had to be re-written and re-distributed to 896 residential units at Marina City. Fortunately, after all that was done, the city cancelled the elevator inspection.

Reader comment

The last sentence in the memo, “Your hamstring muscles are not normally used to long downhill climbs,” chafed Marina City resident Craig Richmond.

“How about downhill descents? Also, this sentence really needs a verb. The expression ‘used to’ or ‘use to’ is best left to verbal communication. It should read: Your hamstring muscles are not normally accustomed to executing (or performing) long downhill descents.” He also recommends a comma in the third sentence immediately before the word “all.”