What it is
Desert Ridge Marketplace is the 1.2-million-square-foot open-air shopping center at the northeast corner of Tatum Boulevard and the Loop 101, the commercial heart of Desert Ridge, the 5,700-acre master-planned community that north Phoenix grew into around the turn of the century. Vestar built it on state trust land and opened it in late 2001, and it was 97 percent leased within six months, which tells you how badly the north Valley needed a place to buy things. More than 100 stores and restaurants fill it now.
It is laid out as two centers in one. The outer ring is a conventional power center: big-box stores, a grocery, a gas station, the errands. The middle is The District, a pedestrian core built around an AMC multiplex, Dave & Buster’s and a strip of casual restaurants (Yard House, Copper Blues, Islands, the Whining Pig, Kajiken Ramen), with a splash pad, an outdoor fireplace, seating and a stage. A $22 million redevelopment in 2017 repainted everything, added a fountain at the entrance and turned The District into the north Valley’s de facto town square, with live music on the stage most Friday and Saturday evenings in the cool months and a Sip & Stroll program that lets you carry a drink between the patios.
Why leave Scottsdale for it
You would not, from Old Town; Kierland Commons and Scottsdale Quarter are closer and better. But if you are staying at the JW Marriott Desert Ridge a mile north, at the Princess or anywhere in Kierland, this is the nearest cinema, pharmacy, grocery and family dinner, and on a winter Friday night the band and the splash pad make it a pleasant evening rather than an errand.
The practical version
Thirty-three minutes from Old Town up the 101, fifteen from Kierland. Free parking everywhere. Stores keep mall hours; the restaurants and the AMC run late. A two-level price; it is a chain center. An evening is a movie, a dinner and the splash pad.
When to go
Friday and Saturday evenings from October to April, when the stage is live from six to nine and the fireplace is lit; this is the center at its best, and the only time it feels like a place rather than a parking lot. Summer evenings after seven, for the splash pad and the cinema; the daytime is for the car-to-door errands. Weekday afternoons are empty and efficient if the goal is a store.
What to do
- Eat in The District. Yard House for the beer list and the big menu, Islands for burgers with kids, Copper Blues for a louder night with music, Kajiken for ramen, the Whining Pig for a quieter glass. None of it is destination cooking; all of it is reliable.
- The AMC. The north Valley’s multiplex, with the reclining seats and the full concession menu; the eight o’clock show after a six o’clock dinner is the local routine.
- Dave & Buster’s. The arcade-and-bar for teenagers and the adults who have given up resisting.
- The splash pad and the fireplace. Free, in the middle of The District, and the reason families come back; one for summer, one for winter.
- The events. Live music on the stage, Sip & Stroll, a fall pumpkin patch on the AMC lawn; the center’s calendar lists them.
- Errands. The ring has the big boxes and a grocery; for a resort guest who needs sunscreen, a swimsuit or a case of water, this is the stop.
With kids
Built for them: the splash pad, the arcade, the cinema and restaurants that hand out crayons. Our kids note lists it with the Scottsdale options for a hot evening. Teenagers can be set loose in The District for two hours with no harm done.
The neighborhood
You are at the Tatum line between Phoenix and Scottsdale, in the Desert Ridge district: the JW Marriott a mile north, High Street a half mile east with the more grown-up restaurants, the Musical Instrument Museum two miles south, and the Kierland Quarter fifteen minutes east.
The story
Desert Ridge was Arizona’s answer to the question of what to do with state trust land on the edge of a growing city: a 5,700-acre master plan at the northeast corner of Phoenix, laid out in the 1990s with a resort, a shopping center, a hospital campus and thousands of houses, sold off parcel by parcel at state land auctions. Vestar, the Phoenix developer of open-air centers, won the retail parcel at Tatum and the 101 and built the Marketplace in 2001 as one of the largest open-air centers in the Southwest. The timing looked bad (it opened months after September 11, in a recession) and turned out fine: the surrounding neighborhoods were filling fast, the JW Marriott opened a mile north in 2002, Mayo Clinic’s hospital was growing to the south, and the center leased up almost immediately.
The District was the innovation. Rather than a pure power center of boxes and parking, Vestar put a walkable core in the middle aimed at teenagers and young adults, with a video screen, a stage, restaurants and a cinema, and it became the social center of a district that had none. By its fifteenth year the center was dated enough that Vestar spent $22 million in 2017 on paint, a fountain, new signs and a rebuilt District with more seating and a proper events program. The north Valley has voted it its favorite shopping center more than once since, most recently in the Foothills Focus poll of 2025, and it remains the model for the open-air centers Vestar has built since.
The Scottsdale connection
The Tatum line is the only thing separating Desert Ridge from Scottsdale, and the North Scottsdale resorts have always treated the Marketplace as their own: the Princess, the Westin Kierland and the Kierland hotels are all closer to it than to Old Town, and a resort guest with a rental car ends up here for the movie, the pharmacy and the swimsuit. Kierland Commons, two years older and a few miles east, is its upscale sibling; the two centers split the north Valley between them, with Kierland taking the shopping and Desert Ridge the errands and the kids.
Getting there
The 101 north from Scottsdale to the Tatum Boulevard exit; the center is immediately northeast of the interchange, with entrances from Tatum and from Deer Valley Road. From Kierland, Bell Road west to Tatum. Parking is free and enormous; the District is best reached from the Tatum-side lots near the AMC.