What it is
The Churchill is a block of shipping containers at 1st Street and Roosevelt, at the western edge of Roosevelt Row, arranged around a covered courtyard, with each container holding a small Phoenix business: a bar, a kitchen, a coffee counter, a shop. There are nineteen containers and about ten tenants at any time. You walk in off the street, order a drink from one of the bar windows, claim a pallet-wood table under the fans and misters, and send your party to different kitchens for pizza, tacos, sandwiches or whatever the current roster is doing; everyone eats at the same table. It opened on September 1, 2018, on what had been a dirt lot, and it was the first project of its kind in the Valley.
The founders, Kell Duncan and Hartley Rodie, were local entrepreneurs who wanted small Phoenix operators to have a downtown storefront without a downtown lease, and the model has held: the tenants are local, small and changeable, and the courtyard is the constant. A second project modeled on it, the Jefferson House in Peoria, broke ground in 2025 with the Churchill’s team involved.
Why leave Scottsdale for it
You would not, alone. You would come for Roosevelt Row on a First Friday and end here, or for a Suns or Diamondbacks game and eat here first, fifteen minutes’ walk from either building, or because you are four people with four opinions about dinner and this is the one place downtown that solves that. Old Town’s nightlife has patios by the dozen; it has nothing in this format, a dozen small local businesses sharing one courtyard, and the Row’s crowd is a different crowd.
The practical version
Twenty-four minutes from Old Town, 202 to 7th Street, north to Roosevelt, west to 1st. Street parking north and east of the block; the Roosevelt/Central train stop three blocks west. Order at the windows, sit anywhere. Check the tenant list on the site if a particular kitchen matters to you, because they change. Evenings most of the year; afternoons from October to April; the fans and coolers make summer evenings tolerable, not pleasant.
When to go
First Friday, the first Friday of every month, when the Row’s galleries open late and the courtyard fills from 6 on; see the Roosevelt Row guide for the state of the street market, which in 2026 is on hold. Before a game at the Suns arena or Chase Field, both a fifteen-minute walk south, when the kitchens are quick and the drinks are cheaper than the arena’s. A weekday evening or Sunday afternoon from October through April, when the courtyard is half empty and the weather is the reason Phoenix exists.
Summer afternoons are not the time; the evaporative coolers and fans help after dark.
How to do it
- A drink first, from one of the bar containers, which pour local beer, wine and cocktails; then a table under the fans.
- Split up. Each person orders from a different kitchen window and brings it back. The format rewards indecision.
- Look in the shops. A local apparel brand was among the original tenants and the shop containers have stayed local.
- Walk the Row afterward, east along Roosevelt for the murals and galleries, or south down 1st Street toward the arena and the basement club at Valley Bar on Central.
The neighborhood
The Churchill sits where Roosevelt Row meets downtown proper: the arts district’s murals and galleries are east along Roosevelt, the apartment towers and the arena are south, the Phoenix Art Museum and the Heard are a mile north up Central. Cibo, the pizzeria in a 1913 bungalow, is a mile west on 5th Avenue; Welcome Diner, in Garfield, is a mile east. Both have guides in this section.
With kids
Afternoons and early evenings, yes: an open courtyard, casual food, a different window for every appetite. Weekend nights after 8 it is a bar.
The story
Downtown Phoenix in the mid-2010s had a problem that every reviving downtown has: the small businesses that made it interesting could not afford the new buildings that revival brought. Kell Duncan and Hartley Rodie, two local entrepreneurs with an interest in what they called socially minded development, bought a dirt lot at 1st Street and Roosevelt and hired Local Studio, a Phoenix design-build firm, to stack nineteen decommissioned shipping containers around a courtyard. Containers are cheap, fast and, in a city of 110-degree summers, a challenge; the solution was a covered courtyard with evaporative coolers and large fans, and tables and benches built from refurbished shipping pallets. The Churchill opened on September 1, 2018, with ten tenants: a pizza maker, a taco kitchen, a sandwich counter, a coffee shop, a juice bar, a cocktail bar, a Phoenix apparel brand and a few others.
It worked. The format gave a dozen small operators a downtown address, gave the Row’s First Friday crowd a place to sit, and gave the arena and ballpark crowds a patio that was not a chain. Tenants have come and gone, which is the point of a container lease, and the courtyard has stayed full. In 2025 Duncan and the Churchill’s operations team partnered with the owners of a West Valley restaurant group on the Jefferson House, a single-story version in Peoria with six retail spaces, three restaurants and a bar, modeled, in Duncan’s words, to feel like The Churchill.
The Scottsdale connection
Scottsdale’s answer to the same problem has been the food hall and the resort patio, both of which are run by one operator with one menu and one bar; the happy hour note lists the good ones. The Churchill’s model, many small operators sharing a courtyard, has not been tried in Scottsdale, where land is too expensive and the city’s design review would have views on shipping containers. A Scottsdale visitor who likes the idea finds it here or in Peoria, and nowhere between.
Getting there
From Old Town, Loop 202 west to the 7th Street exit, north to Roosevelt and west to 1st Street; or Scottsdale Road south to McDowell, west to 7th Street and south two blocks. Twenty-four minutes with no traffic. Street parking on the blocks north and east of the courtyard is usually available except on a First Friday, when the Phoenix Art Museum lot a mile north and a walk down Central is the better plan. The Roosevelt/Central light-rail stop is three blocks west; our getting around note explains how to reach the line from Scottsdale.