What is Canopy by Hilton Scottsdale Old Town?
It’s the hotel that ended Old Town’s long hotel drought. When Canopy by Hilton Scottsdale Old Town opened in October 2020 at the corner of First Street and Marshall Way, it was billed as the first new hotel in Old Town in more than a decade. The previous one had been the W Scottsdale in 2008.
Canopy is Hilton’s lifestyle brand, built around local character, and this one leans into it. Dallas firm Studio 11 Design used desert colors, art by local artists and headboards made of local wood etched with copper and backlit, meant to suggest Camelback Mountain at sunset. There are 177 rooms and suites, about 2,000 square feet of meeting space and a fitness room.
The main attraction is on the roof. Outrider Rooftop Lounge, on the seventh floor, has a heated pool, a whirlpool, a fire pit, cabanas and a bar, with a clear view of Camelback across Old Town’s low skyline. It’s a hotel pool by day and one of the busiest rooftop bars in the city at sunset. On the ground floor, Cobre Kitchen + Cocktails opened as the hotel’s restaurant, with a coffee and pastry counter for mornings.
The location is the gallery side of Old Town: the Marshall Way and Main Street galleries, Western Spirit museum and Fifth Avenue’s shops are a few blocks away.
It suits couples, friend groups and anyone who wants a stylish hotel they can walk home to. People who want a quiet pool on a Saturday afternoon or a big resort should look elsewhere.
How to do the Canopy right
Go up to Outrider early. On weekends, the rooftop fills with locals well before sunset, and the best spots along the rail go first. As a guest you have the advantage of an elevator ride, so use it: head up about an hour before sunset, get a drink and settle in. Weekday mornings at the pool are much quieter.
Borrow a bike. Canopy hotels keep bikes for guests, and this neighborhood suits them. Ride north along Marshall Way to the Arizona Canal path and the Soleri Bridge, or south to the ballpark.
Do the gallery blocks on a Thursday. Scottsdale ArtWalk has run through the Marshall Way and Main Street galleries on Thursday evenings since 1975, and the hotel is on its doorstep. Western Spirit: Scottsdale’s Museum of the West is a block or two north and is worth an afternoon even for people who think they don’t like Western art.
Spring training on foot. Scottsdale Stadium is about half a mile away. In March, that walk beats game-day parking.
Budget for parking. Covered self-parking is available for a nightly fee. If you’re staying in Old Town and walking, you can skip the car rental for a day or two and use rideshare or the Scottsdale Trolley.
Dinner nearby. Fifth Avenue’s Citizen Public House and FnB are a short walk north, and ZuZu at the Valley Ho is a few blocks west.
Old Town’s first new hotel in more than a decade
By the industry’s count, Old Town went more than a decade without a new hotel. The W opened on Camelback Road in 2008, just as the national financial crisis hit, and then nothing new opened until 2020. Old Town’s existing hotels changed names instead: the Civic Center hotel on Drinkwater was the Mondrian, then the Theodore, then the Saguaro, while the Valley Ho added its tower in 2008. Meanwhile Old Town’s restaurants and bars kept multiplying.
Miller Global Properties broke the drought. It developed the hotel at First Street and Marshall Way with Ryan Companies as general contractor and its own Mile High Hospitality as manager, and chose Canopy, Hilton’s lifestyle brand built around neighborhood character. The site is in the gallery district. Marshall Way is named for Thomas R. Marshall, Woodrow Wilson’s vice president, who wintered in Scottsdale from 1914. Galleries have clustered there and on Main Street since the 1960s, and Western Spirit opened nearby in 2015. A hotel with local art in every room and a rooftop facing Camelback fit the street.
The opening date was hard. The hotel welcomed its first guests in October 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, when hotels across the country were half empty. Outrider soon became one of the most talked-about rooftops in the city, a bar locals visit whether or not they’re staying.
In December 2021 Senna House opened on Camelback Road with interiors by Studio 11 and House of Form, and Old Town’s new-hotel era was underway. In October 2023 Miller Global sold the Canopy to Dynamic City Capital for $102 million, less than three years after opening. That price tells you how much investors valued a new hotel in walkable Old Town.
The Canopy matters less for its architecture than for what it showed: people want to stay in the middle of Old Town, near the galleries and restaurants, not only out on the resort corridor.