What is the Hampton Inn & Suites Scottsdale on Shea?
From Scottsdale Road, the Hampton Inn & Suites Phoenix/Scottsdale on Shea Boulevard looks like any well-kept Hampton: three stories of stucco and a lot full of rental cars. Most of the building is newer than its 1994 roots suggest. The original two-story, 130-room Hampton Inn was built here in 1994 by developer W.E. O’Neil. In 2016 its owners closed it and spent nearly a year rebuilding it. They knocked down one end, added two wings and a third floor, and reopened on October 13, 2017 with 150 rooms, including 48 suites and two grand suites.
The rebuild added two features that set it apart from most hotels in its class. One is a two-story, glass-walled lobby and breakfast room. The other is an oasis-style pool courtyard with fire pits, palms and bougainvillea. The manager, ZMC Hotels, called it a resort-style Hampton, and the description mostly holds. You still get the Hampton basics: free hot breakfast, a fitness room, meeting space and free Wi-Fi.
The address works well, too. The Shops at Gainey Village, with Hash Kitchen and Pomo, is a few minutes south. The Airpark is a short drive north, and the Shea Corridor’s strip-mall restaurants run east.
Who it’s for: families who want a suite and a good pool without resort pricing, business travelers working along Scottsdale Road or at the Airpark, and spring-training groups who’d rather not stay in the Talking Stick crowds. Who should look elsewhere: anyone who wants to walk to nightlife. Old Town is a fifteen-minute drive.
How to do the Hampton on Shea right
Choose a suite. Forty-eight suites in a 150-room Hampton is a high share, and they were built new in 2017. For a family or a longer stay, the extra room is worth the modest upcharge.
Use the pool at the right time. The courtyard is the reason to choose this Hampton over others. Late afternoon and evening, when the fire pits are lit and the day’s heat has eased, are the best times. On summer days, go early in the morning.
Eat breakfast in, dinner nearby. The free hot breakfast covers mornings. For dinner, go a few minutes south to Gainey Village, or east on Shea to the Valley’s best strip-mall restaurants, including Andreoli and Chompie’s.
Bring the group. The rebuild also expanded the fitness center and updated the meeting rooms. A youth team, a wedding block or a small company offsite can share the pool courtyard in the evening and the breakfast room in the morning, which is simpler than arranging the same thing at a resort.
Plan around events. This stretch of Scottsdale Road is central to January’s Barrett-Jackson auction at WestWorld, February’s WM Phoenix Open and March’s spring training. Those weeks book up and cost the most. Late spring and fall are the best value.
Drive, and park free. This is a car-dependent area: Scottsdale Road traffic, no sidewalk scene. Parking is easy, and the Loop 101 is a few minutes east on Shea.
Rebuilding a 1990s Hampton instead of replacing it
The Hampton arrived at Scottsdale Road and Shea in 1994, when the land around Gainey Ranch was filling in fast. The gated golf community and its Hyatt Regency (1986) had turned Daniel Gainey’s former Arabian horse ranch into one of the city’s more expensive addresses. The commercial land along Scottsdale Road to the north, toward Shea, was a natural fit for what Scottsdale lacked then: mid-priced hotel rooms for business travelers, visiting families and budget vacationers. Developer and builder W.E. O’Neil built a two-story, 130-room Hampton Inn there. For more than twenty years it was an ordinary, reliable roadside hotel. One neighbor was Razz’s, chef Erasmo “Razz” Kamnitzer’s longtime restaurant up the road.
By the mid-2010s, the building had a common problem. A two-story 1990s hotel can’t easily compete with newer select-service hotels that have bigger lobbies, suites and real pools. The usual options are a cosmetic refresh, a sale or demolition. The owners, Hall Equities Group and the hotel management company ZMC Hotels, picked an unusual fourth option. They brought back W.E. O’Neil, the original builder, to reconstruct it. Ground broke on September 12, 2016, with Mayor Jim Lane attending. Over roughly eleven months, crews demolished one end of the building, added two-story wings to the north and south, put a third floor on the remaining original section, and built a two-story atrium lobby and the new pool courtyard. ZMC’s project manager called it the most significant renovation the company had undertaken.
The hotel reopened on October 13, 2017 as a Hampton Inn & Suites, with 20 more rooms, a new brand tier and a pool that compares well with some small resorts. It’s a modest example of a broader pattern in Scottsdale’s 2010s hotel market: rather than tearing down the 1990s stock built around the city’s master-planned communities, owners added on and repositioned it. The result is a Hampton with real suites, a good pool courtyard and the same convenient location it has had since 1994.