What is the Hilton at Cavasson?
Hilton North Scottsdale at Cavasson is a six-story, 237-room full-service hotel built as the hotel for Cavasson, a 134-acre district of offices and planned housing at the northwest corner of Hayden Road and the Loop 101. It opened in January 2023, making it one of the newer full-service hotels in north Scottsdale. It feels new, for better and worse: crisp rooms, a polished pool deck, and a setting of office buildings, parking structures and freeway rather than palm trees and old adobe.
The hotel has more amenities than its corporate setting suggests. Desert Pony Tavern is the restaurant and bar, a Southwest-inspired gastropub that opens onto a resort-style pool, so dinner can be outdoors most of the year. There’s a coffee shop for mornings, a fitness center, and about 15,000 square feet of event space, including a top-floor room and terrace facing the McDowell Mountains. That’s the best view in the building and worth seeing even if you aren’t attending an event.
On weekdays most guests are here on business: Cavasson’s offices, the Scottsdale Airpark and the corporate campuses along the 101. On weekends it’s a good base for leisure: TPC Scottsdale, the Fairmont Princess and WestWorld are all a few minutes away, and the McDowell Sonoran Preserve trailheads are a reasonable drive east.
Who should stay elsewhere: anyone who wants to walk to dinner, or wants the full resort experience of golf, spa and sprawling grounds. Old Town is a drive away, and the Princess is the full resort nearby.
How to do the Cavasson Hilton right
Go on a weekend. During the week the hotel fills with business travelers and meetings. On Friday and Saturday nights it tends to quiet down, and the pool and Desert Pony feel calm instead of corporate. It’s an underrated choice for a golf weekend.
Have dinner by the pool. Desert Pony Tavern’s open-air seating beside the pool makes for an easy first night. For a bigger night out, the Princess’s restaurants, including Bourbon Steak and La Hacienda, are a short drive, as is the dining row at Scottsdale Quarter, with Dominick’s and True Food Kitchen.
Use the free parking. Self-parking is complimentary, which isn’t a given at north Scottsdale’s resorts. With a car you can easily reach the Gateway Trailhead for a morning hike, then the pool by lunch.
Plan for event weeks. For the WM Phoenix Open, Barrett-Jackson or the Arabian Horse Show, you’re very close to the venues, but so is everyone else. Hayden Road and the 101 interchanges back up badly on the busy days, so leave early or take a rideshare.
See the top floor. If the rooftop terrace isn’t booked for a private event, ask whether you can see it. The view of the McDowells at sunset shows why north Scottsdale grew in this direction.
Bring the dog. The hotel accepts pets for a fee with a weight limit. Confirm the current terms before you arrive.
From State Trust land to a business district
For most of Scottsdale’s history, the land where Cavasson now stands was Arizona State Trust land: open desert held by the state and auctioned over time to fund schools. It sat just north of the Airpark, which grew around the city’s airport, the former Thunderbird Field II, and up the Loop 101 from the resort district that the Scottsdale Princess and TPC Scottsdale created in 1987. As the freeway filled in and the Airpark grew into a major employment center, the remaining trust parcels near the 101 became some of the most valuable undeveloped land in the city.
In 2018, Nationwide Realty Investors, the real estate arm of the Columbus, Ohio, insurer Nationwide and already the developer of the Rivulon business park in Gilbert, bought 134 acres at Hayden Road and the Loop 101 at a State Trust land auction for roughly $83 million. It named the project Cavasson and announced a master plan of about 1.8 million square feet of offices, roughly 1,600 homes, hotels, shops and restaurants. The first office building, a five-story, 460,000-square-foot structure, opened with Nationwide’s own regional headquarters taking 170,000 square feet.
The hotel was the next step. When Nationwide announced the grand opening on January 5, 2023, it called the Hilton a major milestone in delivering the full vision for the development. The building has six stories, 237 rooms, Desert Pony Tavern, a 15,000-square-foot event center and a rooftop terrace, and it is managed by Columbus Hospitality Management, another Columbus connection.
The Hilton is a good example of what the north Scottsdale hotel market has become. For decades, new lodging here meant destination resorts built for winter visitors. The newer generation is designed around office districts and event calendars: business travelers during the week, golf and event crowds on weekends, and meetings throughout. It’s not a romantic story, but it is the current one, and the hotel is comfortable, well-placed and much closer to TPC than to Old Town.