What is the AC Hotel Scottsdale Old Town?
The AC Hotel Scottsdale Old Town is the newest hotel in downtown Scottsdale. It opened on February 26, 2026, a six-story, 168-room building on Third Avenue just west of Scottsdale Road, a block from the Fifth Avenue shops. AC is Marriott’s European-styled select-service brand: clean, modern rooms, a lobby bar called the AC Lounge, a continental-breakfast AC Kitchen and no full restaurant downstairs.
The roof is the draw. Up top there’s a pool facing Camelback Mountain and Cielito, a 70-seat rooftop bar and restaurant serving the seafood-heavy food of Mexico’s northwest coast. In a downtown where most buildings are two or three stories, a six-story rooftop sees a long way, and Cielito has become one of Old Town’s sunset reservations.
The site has history. This is the hotel half of The Kimsey, a PEG Companies project named for the family that farmed this corner from 1909. It replaced a Howard Johnson motel and an event space called the Venue, and it is keeping Ralph Haver’s 1960s Kimsey Building, which was Scottsdale’s City Hall from 1963 to 1968.
Who it suits: couples and friends who want a new, stylish room in walking distance of the galleries, Fifth Avenue and the Entertainment District, plus travelers with a dog up to 50 pounds. The 18 two-bedroom suites suit small groups. Who should look elsewhere: anyone who wants free breakfast, self-parking (it’s valet-only), or a full-service hotel with a spa.
How to do the AC Hotel right
Reserve Cielito first. The rooftop seats about 70, and sunset tables go fast, especially on weekends and in season. Book as soon as you book your room, and order from the seafood side of the menu. Locals come up here without staying at the hotel, so don’t assume a guest gets a table.
Know about the two-bedroom suites. The hotel has 74 double-queen rooms, 71 kings and 18 two-bedroom suites, according to PEG. Two-bedroom suites are rare in a new downtown hotel and useful for two couples or a family.
Budget for valet. Parking is valet-only in a three-level underground garage. If you’re arriving from Sky Harbor and plan to walk Old Town, consider skipping the rental car.
Walk west and south. The Fifth Avenue shops and Marshall Way galleries are a block or two away, Craftsman Court is nearby, and the Old Town walking routes start at the door. Scottsdale Fashion Square and the canal are a short walk north.
Look at the Kimsey Building. Before you leave, cross to the south side of Indian School Road and look back at Haver’s triangle gable — then read our Ralph Haver guide and walk to his Pima Plaza building on First Avenue to compare.
Expect construction next door. The apartment phase of The Kimsey continues beside the hotel, so ask for a room facing away from the work if noise matters.
The Kimsey corner: farmland, City Hall, a motel and a rooftop
Few hotel sites in Scottsdale carry this much of the city’s story. In 1909, William E. Kimsey, an Indiana farmer, bought five acres near what is now the northwest corner of Scottsdale and Indian School roads and planted oranges. His son Mort Kimsey ran a service station on Scottsdale Road, sat on the first town council in 1951 and served as mayor from 1958 to 1962. By then the family held about an acre, and in 1960 Mort leased it to Butler Homes, the builder of Villa Monterey.
On that land, Ralph Haver designed a two-story office building under a broad triangular gable, finished in the early 1960s. The new city government rented half of it in April 1963 for what was supposed to be one year and stayed until the Civic Center opened in 1968. The Kimsey Building is one of the best surviving examples of the Everyman modernism that shaped Scottsdale’s postwar growth.
The rest of the block went the way of many downtown parcels: a modest Howard Johnson motel and a four-story event space called the Venue. Together with the Haver building they filled a roughly three-acre site between Indian School and Third Avenue, one of the larger single parcels in the downtown core.
PEG Companies bought the site in 2021. City Council approved the project, called The Kimsey, on April 6, 2021, by a 6–1 vote, and the same day the city placed the Kimsey Building on its historic register. The Development Review Board approved the site plan unanimously in February 2022, and the city issued a construction permit in January 2024. The motel and the Venue were demolished; the Haver building was kept for the apartment community’s office, gym and event space.
The hotel opened on February 26, 2026; KTAR described it as the sixth AC Hotel in PEG’s portfolio. It belongs to a wave of 2020s rooftop hotels — the REMI to the north, the AC here — that have added height and roof decks to a downtown long defined by low buildings. The Kimsey shows what that wave can look like when it keeps some of what came before: a new six-story hotel next to a 1960s City Hall, on land a family farmed more than a century ago.