What is the Hampton Inn & Suites Scottsdale at Talking Stick?
Most hotels in the Talking Stick district make you drive somewhere. This one mostly doesn’t. The Hampton Inn & Suites Scottsdale at Talking Stick sits on Talking Stick Way just east of the Loop 101, across the street from Talking Stick Resort and its golf club, within walking distance of Topgolf and close enough to Salt River Fields that a March walk to the ballpark is a pleasure rather than a slog.
It opened in spring 2011 under another name, the Hampton Inn & Suites Scottsdale Riverwalk, inside the Riverwalk business park planned along the freeway. The neighborhood that grew up around it turned out to be about entertainment more than offices, and the hotel took the name everyone already used for the area.
The land is the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community’s. The “Scottsdale, AZ 85256” address is a postal convenience; once you cross the 101 heading east, you’ve left the City of Scottsdale for a sovereign nation that has built the Valley’s most complete entertainment district on its western edge.
The hotel itself is a standard Hampton, and that’s a compliment: 101 rooms, 32 of them suites with a microwave, mini-fridge and bar sink, plus free hot breakfast, free Wi-Fi, free parking, an outdoor pool and a fitness room. It’s for spring-training groups, casino weekenders who don’t want casino-hotel rooms, youth-sports families and anyone who’d rather spend money at Topgolf than on a resort fee.
How to do the Hampton at Talking Stick right
Walk. That’s the whole reason to choose this Hampton over others in the area. Talking Stick Resort’s casino, its showroom and Orange Sky on the 15th floor are across the street. Topgolf is a short stroll. For spring training, walking to Salt River Fields saves the parking charge and the half hour it takes ten thousand cars to leave.
Book March and October early. Spring training fills every bed in the district in late February and March. October brings the Arizona Fall League and the Arizona Taco Festival to the same ballpark. Book months ahead for either.
Take a suite for longer stays. The suites’ microwave and fridge mean a real lunch from leftovers, and the extra space matters with kids.
Eat beyond the breakfast room. Beyond Orange Sky, Spinato’s at The Block, just up the 101, does Chicago thin crust and the famous spinach pie. For a classic steak dinner at casino prices, drive down the freeway to Cholla Prime Steakhouse at Casino Arizona.
Plan the cool-weather walks and the hot-weather drives. In July a few hundred yards of asphalt is a long way. In summer, use the car or a ride-share, and take the kids to Great Wolf Lodge’s indoor waterpark or the air-conditioned aquarium up the road.
Check the casino calendar. Concerts and fight nights at Talking Stick Resort pack the area. If you want quiet, avoid them. If you want a big night out, book for them.
The Riverwalk that became Talking Stick
When the state and the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community agreed in 1990 to run the Loop 101 along the Community’s western edge, the land around the interchanges stayed Community land. Over the next two decades that frontage became one of the most valuable stretches of tribal land in the country. The Community opened the Pavilions in 1989 and Casino Arizona in 1998. Then, in 2010 and 2011, came the two projects that defined the area: Talking Stick Resort in April 2010 and Salt River Fields at Talking Stick in 2011, the first spring-training complex built on tribal land.
The Hampton belongs to a different plan for that frontage. Developers had proposed Riverwalk as a large business park on Community land along the 101, one of the biggest commercial developments planned on Native American land in the country, with corporate offices, retail and hotels on a lease from the Community. The Hampton Inn & Suites Scottsdale Riverwalk opened there in spring 2011 with 101 rooms, at a time when, as local business press later put it, the economy was still in its slump and little else was being built in the area.
Much of what filled in over the next decade was entertainment. Topgolf took a Riverwalk parcel. OdySea Aquarium and Butterfly Wonderland opened along Via de Ventura to the north. Great Wolf Lodge opened in 2019. The Hampton, built for business travelers, found itself in the middle of the Valley’s busiest entertainment district and renamed itself for it.
The story isn’t finished. In December 2022 Caliber, a Scottsdale investment firm, announced it had bought the lease rights to about 100 acres of the Riverwalk land between Talking Stick Way and Via de Ventura — including the parcels under the Hampton and Topgolf — and pitched a mixed-use district of restaurants, hotels, event venues and art attractions. Whatever is built, it will be on the Community’s land under the Community’s terms, as everything east of the freeway has been. For now, the Hampton is the plainest proof of how that frontage changed: a hotel opened in a business park, now a short walk from a casino, a ballpark and a driving range.