Moving with kids is a whole different sport. You're not just comparing square footage and commute times, you're thinking about school boundaries, where the nearest splash pad is, whether there's somewhere the kids can burn off energy at 4pm on a rainy Tuesday, and how far you'd have to drive for a decent birthday party venue. Downtown Redmond handles all of that surprisingly well, and AMLI Redmond Way was built with families in mind in a way that's pretty rare for a brand-new Downtown Redmond WA apartment community. Here's what parents should know.
Apartments good for kids in Redmond
Apartments near top-rated schools
Redmond is served by Lake Washington School District, which is one of the big reasons families keep landing on the Eastside in the first place. Redmond Elementary ranks in the top 5% of schools in the state, and Redmond High School up on Education Hill ranks #14 statewide. Redmond Middle School sits between them as one of the feeder schools, so there's a clear path from kindergarten through graduation without a district change in the middle of it.
School assignments in LWSD go by boundary rather than by nearest building, so always confirm your specific address with the district before you sign anything. That said, the geography here works in your favor. Redmond Elementary is a short walk from downtown, which means the morning routine can involve a stroller and a coffee instead of a car seat and a drop-off line.
The other thing worth knowing: LWSD runs a strong slate of before- and after-school programming, plus the district's STEM and choice programs. Redmond parents tend to be a well-informed bunch, and the district's boundary maps and enrollment pages are genuinely easy to navigate.
Family-sized floor plans
Here's where a lot of downtown apartment hunting falls apart for families. Plenty of new buildings are all studios and one-bedrooms, which is great if you're 26 and terrible if you have a seven-year-old and a bin of Legos.
Our studio to 3-bedroom apartments for rent in Redmond WA show some serious range in sizes, shapes, and layouts. The three-bedroom layouts go up past 1,240 square feet with two full bathrooms, which is enough room for two kids' rooms plus a place to work that isn't the kitchen table. Every apartment comes with air conditioning and a full-size washer and dryer, and if you've ever done a week of family laundry on an apartment-sized stacked unit, you know exactly why that matters.
A few of the smaller details are the ones that give away who this building was designed for. Select homes include mudrooms, which is the single most useful room in a Pacific Northwest household from October through May, and pantries, which solve the eternal problem of where the snack situation lives. Select homes also come with child-friendly toilet seats already installed, which sounds random until you realize how often you'll use it. Spa-inspired bathrooms with oversized soaking tubs are marketed to adults, but let's be honest about who's actually going to be in there with a fleet of bath toys.
Smart keyless entry rounds it out. You're carrying a diaper bag, a scooter, and a bag of groceries, and you still get in the door without digging for keys.
Kid-friendly amenities you'll actually use
The luxury apartments with premium amenities in Redmond WA list at AMLI Redmond Way is long, but the family-relevant part of it is the interesting part.
Free Play is an interactive children's playroom, and it's the amenity that earns its keep on the tenth straight day of Seattle drizzle. Instead of loading everyone into the car to find an indoor play space, you take the elevator. The Music Station is a podcast and music room with instruments and recording equipment, which is a gift for the kid who wants to learn drums and a bigger gift for the neighbors who don't have to hear it. There's also a golf simulator, a solarium, and the Cul-de-Sac, a Dutch-inspired pedestrian-only gathering space that's exactly what it sounds like: somewhere kids can be outside without being in traffic.
Two clubrooms, the Havana Lounge and the Overlook Club, give you somewhere to host a birthday or a playdate that isn't your living room. Two fitness centers and a 24/7 gym mean you can actually get a workout in during naptime. And there's a community garden if you want the kids growing something.
For the family dog, there's a pet spa and two dog parks on site, so the muddy-paws problem gets solved before it reaches your hallway carpet.
Apartments with playgrounds
This is the one that surprises people. AMLI Redmond Way has an on-site playground, and not a token one.
The Backyard is an elevated courtyard play area with a climbing frame, a playhouse, and a turfed mound, and there's a second play structure integrated into the outdoor space with seating nearby so you're not standing around while your kid does laps. It's the difference between "I'll take them to the park in an hour once I finish this" and "go play, I can see you from here."
The two rooftop decks are worth mentioning in the same breath. The Perch is the expansive one, with hammocks, a firepit lounge, turf, and views across the Eastside. Kids love a rooftop. Parents love a rooftop with a firepit after bedtime.
Nearby parks and recreation for families
Redmond has something like 47 city parks, and living in Downtown Redmond WA puts you in reach of the best of them without much effort.
Downtown Park is the closest and the most used. It's Redmond's urban park, with a great lawn, whimsical play structures, and a splash pad that runs through the warm months, plus Buoyant, a pavilion with a water wall used for light shows and performances. On a hot August afternoon, this is where every family in Redmond ends up.
Then there's Marymoor Park, King County's largest and oldest park, drawing more than three million visitors a year across its 640 acres. Two large playgrounds, a life-size train, a pro-level climbing wall, paved trails, and the 40-acre off-leash dog park that locals affectionately call doggy Disneyland. The new Marymoor Station Trail connects the light rail station directly to the north end of the park, so you can get there without a car.
The rest of the city's parks and trails fill in the gaps nicely. Farrel-McWhirter Park has a working barnyard with animals and miles of walking trails along Mackey Creek. Westside Park is the newest, with accessible play features and a zipline. Idylwood Beach Park has a swim beach and picnic shelters for when the weather cooperates. Grass Lawn Park has a second splash pad and rope climbers.
Bike storage with tools on site is more useful here than it sounds, because Redmond is the self-declared Bicycle Capital of the Northwest and the Eastrail and Redmond Central Connector trails are right there.
Daycare and childcare options
Downtown Redmond has a real density of licensed childcare, which is not something you can say about every neighborhood on the Eastside.
ABC Learning Center on Cleveland Street is a short walk from the building and runs full-day and half-day care from infancy through pre-K, plus before- and after-school care for school-age kids and full-day coverage on school closure days. They do yoga, music, art, and Spanish weekly, monthly baking classes, and meals cooked on site. It's also an AMLI PERKS partner, which means residents get a discount, and childcare is one of the few places where a resident discount actually moves the needle on a household budget.
Beyond that, the downtown core has multiple licensed centers, Montessori programs, and home-based providers within a few minutes' drive, and Redmond Parks & Recreation runs its own preschool program at Farrel-McWhirter Park alongside youth classes in arts, animals, sports, and STEM. The Redmond Community Center at Marymoor Village handles a lot of the school-age programming and also does birthday party packages, which is a sentence that will mean a great deal to you at some point.
Waitlists on the Eastside are real, so start the search early. Like, earlier than you think.
Family activities and events
The city does a genuinely good job when it comes to activities and events. Derby Days in the summer started as a bike derby and parade back in 1940 and is still the biggest free family event on the calendar. Redmond Lights takes over Downtown Park in the winter with art and light installations. Rockin' on the River is a free all-ages concert series on the lawn by City Hall, and summer camps run for ages 4 through 18 across arts, sports, farm, nature, STEM, and music.
Redmond Town Center is steps away and does a lot of the heavy lifting on rainy weekends. Brick & Mortar Books is a family-owned indie bookstore where the children's section runs along the entire back third of the store, and the co-owner is a former fourth and fifth grade teacher, which explains the curation. They also run the Bigfoot Kids' Book Festival. Kids Magic Lab is the indoor play space upstairs, with climbing structures, a ball pit, a sand pit, a STEM wall, and sensory-focused classes for both neurotypical and neurodivergent kids. The Redmond Saturday Farmers Market runs at the Town Center from spring through fall with live music and food trucks.
Marymoor Park Concerts and Movies at Marymoor cover the summer evenings. And when you want to leave town entirely, the Downtown Redmond Link light rail station is a five-minute walk, connecting you to Bellevue and on toward downtown Seattle without ever putting a kid in a car seat. Microsoft's headquarters is about ten minutes away on the same line, which matters for the parent doing drop-off before work.
Your next step
Alongside our many stunning Seattle apartments available in the city, our Redmond apartments in Seattle are one of the few purpose-built for families who want luxury apartment living without giving up a playground, a school walk, and a park with a train in it. Come see the playroom and the courtyard for yourself and bring the kids — they'll tell you what they think within about four seconds.
Contact us & schedule a tour today! We can’t wait to see you here soon!
