Hello,

I just accepted a job in Kent, Washington and will be moving to the Seattle area at the end of this month. I'm planning a trip to try and find an apartment next week. I'd appreciate any input people who live in Seattle may have as to where good areas to live would be that hopefully avoid the worst of the traffic.

Also is there an active 3-Gun or USPSA community in Seattle?

Thanks!

Kent area will be much cheaper to live than Seattle proper. I'll let others in the south end chime in on specifics.

Washington HTF > IPSC/IDPA??
I believe there is also at least one club with monthly 3-gun matches, in Marysville, about an hour north of Seattle.

If you are going to be working in Kent and you are going to live in Seattle proper, expect about 1-2 hr commute each way during rush hour.

Where to shoot? Pretty much no where! 

Welcome to WA.

The two ranges that I am familiar with are:

- West Coast Armory
- Seattle Police Athletic Association

A two hour drive to the east side of the state provides a variety of shooting venues with your own gear.

If I only have a few hours, I use one of the ranges above. If I have a day, I'll head east.

Traffic will suck, no matter what.

An apartment then once settled into the area, a house buyor rent?

For the apartment if working in Kent get fairly close to work if you can get into a nice place.

There are many shitty aparments in Kent, Auburn, SeaTac, Tukwila, Renton, Federal Way.

If you can say where abouts ball parkish, on where you are working maybe more info can be given.

Want to remain sane?  Live as close to Kent as possible.  Your commute around here is directly tied to your quality of life.

I would say, live between Renton (N. of Kent) and Auburn (S. of Kent), and between Puget Sound (West) and Covington (East).

You will thank me.

Luckily, one of the nation's best gun shows (Washington Arms Collectors) occurs almost monthly in Puyallup (30min South of Kent).  

Welcome to WA, be sure to vote please.

Like everyone said, "stay away from Freeattle". For shooting wise, check out Renton Fish and Game which is an outdoor range. Once a month they run couple different events IDPA, UPSA, IPSC, and some other events I am not familiar with.

Apartment- you will pretty much get what you pay for. Cheap rent- drug deals, illegals and cops all night. On the water- expensive but much more peaceful.

Ranges- From Kent, Renton will serve you well. Not too far away and has the matches you want.


Commute to Kent- You can travel east or south in the morning without much competition. If you are going North or West you will have others going your way. 10 miles can take an hour on the wrong road at the wrong time.



You have LOTS of options for decent apartments north or west of you. Id probably look in either (2) Burien, (1) Des Moines or (3)Federal Way all have nice apartments by the water, 15-20 minutes in the morning to work, 10-15 minutes off peak commute to Seattle and 5-15 minutes to the airport without being in the flight path.

Moved here last year from the Midwest. I also work in Kent. I'd look to avoid the Seattle city stuff and move east. Covington is an option or Maple Valley. My drive is 30 mins and not crowded on back roads from maple valley. The first 6 months I lived in Renton but I like the area and feel of Maple Valley much better. If you live east you can still do all things Seattle on the weekends with a 45 min drive.

There is a nice range and skeet in Ravensdale too. Every other weekend is open to the public and $10.

Kent is very central and close to the main big outdoor ranges in greater Shiteattle. Paul Bunyan, Cascade, TSC all have a loooong membership waiting list IIRR but have public days.

3 gun/ ipsc  you will have to travel farther.

Places east are OK.  Snoqualmie, North Bend, Covington, Maple Valley.

Took me 1/2 hour to drive to Renton Boeing for 6 AM start

I belong to both Cascade (waiting list) and Snoqualmie ranges

Snoqualmie has 200 yd, and pistol ranges

Cascade has Archery, 200 yd, 600 yd, and pistol ranges

What everybody else said.

If you have the time, drive through any prospective apartments complexes.  Look at the condition of the buildings and the common areas.  Look at the condition and type of cars parked there.  Look at any residents you may see around.  Check crime stats for each location.  (never store anything in your vehicle that is valuable or might appear to be valuable.)

You'll find rent in the greater Seattle area to be outrageous thanks to the tech boom that is currently happening.  My niece shares a decent quality 2-bedroom in the Delridge neighborhood of Seattle (not a great neighborhood) and is paying $1700/month.  I did some checking for a friend recently and a lot of the apartments in the Kent area are in that $1500-$2000 range.  Plus many are charging extra monthly "fees" for storage and water.  (Carefully read the fine print).

Depending on your location in Kent, you'll want to look at the commute and how long you're willing to drive. 

My personal opinion--avoid anything up the hill east of Kent.  Suburban bland with slow-moving arterial traffic, such as James Street, 180th, 212th, or Benson Way.  Maple Valley--you'll be stuck driving on 169 or 18 to get anywhere.  Covington, Bonney Lake, Lakeland Hills--blah.  Drive everywhere to everything.  Your kids will be stuck in a no-interaction bland boring nowheresville suburb and you'll get to drive them everywhere.  It will be Olive Garden, Outback Steakhouse, Sam's Club and Red Robin boring culture. Pretty much everywhere outside of Seattle is becoming problematic.  The high prices of living fashionably with the hipsters inside the Seattle city limits is pushing the riff-raff and minorities out to the burbs.

The 2 outdoor ranges I really like are Snoqualmie Valley Rifle Club, and Cascade.  
Cascade has a huge wait, but it has the longest range between the two.  It has multiple bays.. pretty large place.  They do have a few rules of where you can use.. ie One of the rifle bays you can't use rimfire (I think D), but the other rifle bay you can because they have dirt berms.
SVRC is pretty lay back and gives you a decent range of 200 yards.  Two bays, rifle at 200 yds and pistol (not sure how far since I always use the rifle bays)

I was a member of SVRC for several years. Nice to roll in early in the morning, unlock the gate - sometimes be the only shooter.

Many times I am the only one there.  Near hunting season, not so much.....

Good luck, Kent is a shit hole.  Outdoor shooting closest would be Renton Fish and Game, indoor shooting Champions or WAY better head north to West Coast Armory.  Want to shoot out in the woods, will need to drive 1-1.5 hour out of the city into national forest land near Mt Rainier.

I'll disagree on a couple of your points.  Kent has good areas and bad areas.  Kent is over 34 square miles in size.  It's all a matter of where you end up.

Cascade Rifle and Pistol has open shoot days for non-members.  Also, Federal Way Discount has an indoor range, which is closer (at least for me) than Bellevue.  

Thanks for all the advice! I just got done with my apartment hunting trip. After making a test 'commute' from West Seattle I decided that being close to work was my biggest priority. I was sort of surprised by this since I would have thought commuting from the city to the outskirts would be less congested, but it was still pretty rough.

I ended up signing a lease at a recently built apartment complex in Kent near the train station, with the idea that I can take the train to downtown on the weekends. Will be making the drive from Alabama to Washington sometime after July 4th.

Kent has some OK spots to the east, but slightly to the south is Auburn.  If you head towards the southeastern side of Auburn, the Lakeland Hills area, which is a pretty safe and very community minded WITHOUT that Commie/Hippie freaky Seattle feel!!  BTW, I was born and raised in Seattle and know all about the oddities relating to that city.  ANYWAY!!  Women walk/run alone into the evening hours and kids play throughout the Lakeland Hills area, which you don't see in the Seattle/Renton/Kent area, which gives the area an almost normal small town feel.  Yes, this area is slightly more expensive than the rest of Auburn, but well worth the extra couple of hundred dollars a month.

I work in Renton, but right on the border with Tukwila.  It takes me about 25/30 minutes to drive the 17 miles on an average day with moderate traffic.

Several apartments complexes in the Lakeland Hills area are currently leasing.

As for shooting, Champions in Kent is OK for handguns, but West Coast Armory is a far better range, but about 40-45mins northeast from Auburn... The only issue with West Coast Armory is that they have too much cool sh!t on display!!

Good luck!!

Kent basically has 3 areas, West Hill, Valley, and East Hill.  Valley area has many apartments for rent.  You can rent then research on what area you want to live for longer term.
As for shooting ranges:
Champion Arms (indoor) http://championarms.com/shooting-range/
Westcoast Armory (indoor) http://www.westcoastarmory.com/
Cascade Shooting Facility (outdoor, waiting list over 500+ ) https://www.cascadeshootingfacilities.org/

You can check out Issaquah Sportsman Club. It's out door range and they have 7, 15, 25, 50 and 100 yards lanes. You can have more than 1 round in magazine there :-)

I see what you did there.  ;)

If you don't know, the range at Kemore is not MSR friendly.. they require 1 round per magazine rule.  This place is more for the bolt rifle and shotguns.  I did hear their shotgun range is pretty good for skeet..