Narrowed Down

Well, we have an appointment to see a bunch of apartments tomorrow, but for now, we are narrowed down to 2 options.

Option #1- First floor apartment in a row home on a quiet street 1 block from Clark Park. This apartment has charm. It has wood floors, a mantle in the living room, and arched double doors leading into the kitchen. It has an eat in kitchen with a dishwasher and tons of cabinet space. The living room and bedroom are both small-ish. It also has a separate laundry room in the unit with a washer and dryer. It has lots of closet space, a back yard, and an unfinished basement with plenty of storage space, making this apartment an enormous 1100 square feet. It also has radiator heating. The downsides: smallish living spaces, top of our price range with no utilities included. It would most likely be cheap to keep cool in the summer, but would be expensive to heat in the winter.

Option #2- Southwest corner apartment on the 11th floor of a 13 floor high rise. This building also has charm. One of the units we looked at had a juliet balcony and wall sconces, but we decided we'd rather have the view (plus the double doors leading out to the balcony in that unit would prevent us from being able to put an air conditioner in that room). Our unit has neither, but it does have wood floors, radiators, a view, and the original valet door (it used to be a hotel. Hotel guests could open a compartment in the door from inside the room and place clothing in there. The valet could then come and open that same compartment from the outside to pick up the clothes and have them pressed). The living room is HUGE. It has a kitchen with plenty of cabinets and a dishwasher. The bedroom is decent sized. The building has coin-op washers and dryers on site, and since we're apartment hunting in the off season, they would include free parking in their covered garage for 1 year. They also have a rooftop garden area. Downsides: slightly more expensive than the other even, but on the up side, we would only have to pay for electric. It is a corner unit facing southwest, so it will probably be very warm in the summer. We might have to fork it out on the electric bill to keep cool. We are worried that we'll get attached to the garage parking and then we'll have to pay a fee for that once our year of free parking is up.

We have been going back and forth between these for days. We are waiting for an agent to answer some questions we have about option #1 still, and we think we want to go see both again before deciding. Opinions anyone?