DTN Management Co. had its first move-in date on Monday, and many other apartment complexes are scheduled to open their doors in the coming weeks.

The process of making apartments ready for students is extensive, with cleaning, painting and maintenance crews working their way through hundreds of apartments, DTN’s area director for student properties Colin Cronin said.

To make room for the August move-in dates, 1,300 people moved out July 21, leaving DTN nine days to make their units ready for tenants, Cronin said.

“Organized chaos is the best way to put it,” he said. “1,300 apartments in nine days is no easy task.”

For students such as marketing junior Ryan Thelan, living in an apartment offers more responsibility than living in the dorms.

Thelan will live with two roommates and said it probably will take him two weeks to fully settle in.

“Living in an apartment, you have more freedom,” he said. “Mom and Dad aren’t there to hold your hand the whole way. Doing things like setting up the TV and the Internet is a little more work, but it teaches you to be a little more independent.”

The recent arrival of students is met happily by businesses, many of which have seen their sales drop this summer.

With 80 percent of his store’s business coming from the beginning of the fall and spring semesters, president of Collegeville Textbook Company, 321 E. Grand River Ave., Tom Muth said the recent arrival of more shoppers is a welcomed sign.

“We’ve definitely seen an increase in early shoppers trying to get their books this week,” Muth said. “It’s (previously been) a pretty gradual increase throughout the month, and then the week before classes, there’s a big spike up.”

Harper’s Restaurant and Brewpub, 131 Albert Ave., also saw a dip in customers this summer with the restaurant often experiencing slow traffic during the day, server Kyle Christensen said.

“(In the fall there’s) a constant flow of people, instead of only being busy at night,” Christensen said. “When the festivals happen, it’s busy, but other than that … the daytime business drops off quite a bit.”

Returning to East Lansing hasn’t been easy for Moul, who said she was told television and Internet came with her lease, only to find out it didn’t when she moved in.

To make matters worse, she found black mold in her apartment, a problem DTN has since dealt with.

Although she was allowed to break her lease without penalty, Moul would have had to move out by Aug. 2, her 21st birthday.

“I was livid,” she said. “I was crying. I just moved in and had all this happen. It was so stressful. And I’ve been with DTN forever, so I was really shocked.”

Although exasperating at times, Moul said this experience has taught her a tremendous amount going forward.

“It’s important to read everything in your lease — don’t just sign,” she said. “And always ask questions because I even asked questions and was given an answer that I thought was true and learned that it wasn’t at all. It’s really important to know all the information you can before you sign anything.”