What it is
Tempe Marketplace is the open-air shopping center at the junction of the Loop 101 and the Loop 202, 130 acres of stores and parking that opened in September 2007 on the north edge of Tempe, with the Salt River channel on one side and the freeway on the other. Vestar, the developer, built it as two malls at once. The outer ring, along the perimeter roads, is big-box: a Target, the usual electronics and home stores, the chains that need a loading dock. The inside is The District, a walkable, lighted core of restaurants, smaller shops, a sixteen-screen Harkins with one of the chain’s Cine Capri giant screens, and a courtyard with a stage and a very large LED screen that shows games on Saturdays and movies on summer nights.
The part most visitors never learn is what is under it. The site was a landfill that went on the federal Superfund list in 1983, and getting it off the list and into retail took twenty years and the largest brownfield cleanup in the state’s history, with land bought from 52 separate owners. It is, in that sense, the most ambitious thing in Tempe, and it looks like a mall.
Why leave Scottsdale for it
Honestly, for a reason, not for its own sake. Scottsdale Fashion Square and Scottsdale Quarter have the better stores; our shopping note is where the destination shopping lives. Tempe Marketplace earns the sixteen-minute drive three ways: a movie on a huge screen at a Harkins that is easier to park at than any in Scottsdale; a practical errand at the Target or the outdoor-gear stores that Scottsdale’s malls do not carry; and a dinner at one of the District’s chain restaurants, which are cheaper and far less booked than their Scottsdale twins, on the way to or from Sky Harbor, which is ten minutes further.
The practical version
Sixteen minutes from Old Town, no traffic: 101 south to Rio Salado Parkway, exit west, and you are in the lot. Parking is free everywhere; the garage behind the Harkins puts you in the middle of The District. Stores keep mall hours; the restaurants run later; the Harkins runs latest. Two hours covers a movie and a meal.
When to go
Weekday evenings are the center at its best: the District is lit, the restaurants have tables, the Harkins is uncrowded. Friday and Saturday nights from October through April bring the free concerts on the courtyard stage, usually a local band or a tribute act, over by nine, and a crowd of East Valley families who treat it as the town square Tempe never had. Summer is a Harkins-and-dinner proposition: park in the garage, stay under the shade structures and misters, and skip the outer ring entirely. The weeks before Christmas are the one time to avoid it, when the 101 exit backs up onto the freeway.
What to do
Start with the movie. The Cine Capri auditorium is the reason to see a big picture here rather than in Scottsdale, and the Harkins loyalty cup is the cheapest soda in the Valley. Then walk the District loop: it is a single oval of a few hundred yards, with the courtyard at the center, and you can see every restaurant option in ten minutes. The chains are the usual mid-market suspects, several of which also have Scottsdale Quarter locations where the wait is twice as long. The big-box ring is an errand, not a stroll; drive to it.
With kids
The courtyard is the draw: the LED screen, the fountains that children end up in regardless of signage, and the free shows. The Harkins has a supervised children’s play area for the parents’ movie, which Scottsdale’s theaters do not. Pair the trip with Tempe Beach Park and the lake, five minutes west on Rio Salado, and our Scottsdale with kids note has the rest of the afternoon.
The neighborhood
Rio Salado Parkway runs west from the center along the lake to downtown Tempe and the Tempe Center for the Arts, about three miles, and east to the Mesa line. The 202 takes you to the airport in ten minutes, which makes the Marketplace the standard last stop before a flight; our airport note explains why.
The story
The land along the north bank of the Salt River at McClintock Drive was a dump. For most of the twentieth century it took the East Valley’s trash, and in 1983, when the federal Superfund program listed the country’s worst contaminated sites, the Tempe landfill went on the list. It stayed there for about twenty years. What changed its fate was the freeway: the Loop 202 Red Mountain, built along the river in the 1990s and 2000s, made the junction with the 101 the most visible corner in the East Valley, and Vestar, the Phoenix developer behind Desert Ridge and the Pavilions, decided it was worth the cleanup.
The cleanup was the largest brownfield remediation in Arizona history. The company bought parcels from 52 separate owners, capped and vented the fill, and built the center on a site designed so that the gas from a half-century of garbage could be collected underneath the parking. Tempe Marketplace opened on September 28, 2007, a year before the recession, with the big-box ring and the District at the center. It has done what open-air centers of its generation have done: survived the retail collapse by being a place to eat and watch movies with stores attached, and it turns over tenants steadily, with another round of national brands arriving in 2026.
The Scottsdale connection
Vestar’s playbook here is the one it used in North Scottsdale and north Phoenix, and a Scottsdale resident will recognize the format from the Pavilions at Talking Stick and Desert Ridge. The difference is the market: Tempe Marketplace serves students and the East Valley, so its stores are a notch down and its prices with them, which is exactly the point of driving to it. It is also the mall Scottsdale resorts send guests to for a Target run, since Scottsdale has no equivalent inside its own borders south of Shea.
Getting there
Loop 101 south from any Scottsdale exit to Rio Salado Parkway; the exit is the last before the 202 interchange and puts you in the lot. Sixteen minutes from Old Town, no traffic. The Valley Metro streetcar and light rail do not reach it, so this is a car trip, and our getting around note has the rideshare math; it is a reasonable fare from Old Town for a movie night.