What is the Holiday Inn & Suites Scottsdale North – Airpark?
Plenty of Airpark hotels stop at a lobby breakfast and a small gym. The Holiday Inn & Suites Scottsdale North – Airpark has its own restaurant, the Raintree Cafe, which serves breakfast and dinner with a happy hour. That matters in a business district where most places to eat close when the offices do.
The hotel sits at 14255 North 87th Street, near the Loop 101’s Raintree Drive exit at the northeast edge of the Airpark. It was built as a Wingate by Wyndham, a brand aimed at business travelers. In January 2015 IHG announced its reopening as a Holiday Inn after a complete renovation of every room and public space. It has 117 rooms, about three dozen of them suites, and some executive suites have balconies, fireplaces and kitchenettes.
The pool is the other selling point: a heated outdoor pool with a two-story waterfall and a hot tub. Add free parking, three small meeting rooms and a fitness center, and it covers most business trips.
The guests are mostly weekday Airpark business travelers, plus families and event crowds, especially during Barrett-Jackson and the WM Phoenix Open, both held a few miles away. If you want desert views, a spa or a walk to restaurants, stay elsewhere. If you want a competent hotel near the 101 with dinner on site, it’s a good choice.
How to do the Airpark Holiday Inn right
Check your breakfast rate. Breakfast at the Raintree Cafe is cooked to order but isn’t free unless your rate includes it. Breakfast-included rates cover two adults sharing a room, and kids 11 and under eat free, which makes it good value for families.
Book a suite for families or long stays. About three dozen of the 117 rooms are suites, and some have kitchenettes. With children, the extra space is usually worth it.
Plan around event traffic. WestWorld of Scottsdale, home of Barrett-Jackson in January, and TPC Scottsdale, home of the WM Phoenix Open in February, are both a short drive away. During those weeks, roads near the venues jam, so leave early or ask the front desk about parking and shuttles for the events.
Use the 101. The Raintree exit gets you onto the Loop 101 quickly. Old Town, Salt River Fields for spring training, and Kierland Commons are all reachable by freeway or surface streets without crossing the whole city.
Leave the pets at home. Pets are not allowed (service animals are). If you’re bringing a dog, the Best Western Plus Thunderbird Suites on the other side of the airport accepts them.
For meetings, keep it small. The hotel’s three meeting rooms total a little over 1,100 square feet, with outdoor space as well. That’s enough for a team offsite or a rehearsal dinner, not a conference.
From Thunderbird Field to the Raintree exit
The land under the Airpark entered Scottsdale’s history in 1942, when the Army turned farmland north of town into Thunderbird Field II, a primary flight school that trained more than 5,500 pilots before it closed in 1944. The runway passed to Arizona State College and then to the Seventh-day Adventists. In 1966, the City of Scottsdale took title to the field for $750,000. That money came from architect George Tewksbury’s Landel Inc., which planned to sell industrial lots around the runway. The airport and Airpark opened in 1967.
For its first decades the Airpark was a quiet industrial park around a small-plane airport. Its growth into Arizona’s second-largest job center came with the freeway. When the Loop 101 was finished through Scottsdale in the early 2000s, exits like Raintree Drive put the Airpark minutes from the rest of the Valley. Technology, finance and healthcare employers moved in, and hotels followed to serve their visitors. Today about 2,900 businesses and roughly 50,000 jobs are in the Airpark.
The building at 14255 North 87th Street began as a Wingate by Wyndham, part of a business-traveler brand whose first hotel opened in 1996. Its owners, Northsight Hospitality, renovated every room and public space and reopened it in January 2015 as a Holiday Inn Hotel & Suites, managed by Henderson Hospitality. The opening announcement highlighted the Raintree Cafe, a putting green, the two-story water feature and executive suites with fireplaces and balconies, and it named GoDaddy among the hotel’s nearby business neighbors.
Holiday Inn itself dates to 1952, when Kemmons Wilson opened the first one in Memphis to give traveling families a predictable room. Bringing the brand to an Airpark office street 60 years later fit Scottsdale’s growth. The city that built its reputation on resorts now has a large business economy around a former Army flight school, and it needs hotels for the people who work there. This one has the advantage of a restaurant that stays open after the offices close.