What was the SunSpree?
In the 1970s the old McCormick cattle ranch became a planned city of lakes, golf courses and resorts, and the hotels came with it: the Inn at McCormick Ranch in 1975, the Scottsdale Conference Center in 1976. Just across Indian Bend Road, east of what’s now McCormick-Stillman Railroad Park, a third opened in 1977. Joan Fudala, the city’s historian, writes that it was planned as the Timber Bridge Inn and opened as a Radisson Resort.
By the 1990s it was the Holiday Inn SunSpree Resort, a 200-room hotel on 16 acres. SunSpree was Holiday Inn’s name for its leisure resorts, and this one had what the brand promised: a heated pool, the Cafe on the Lakes, meeting rooms for about 600 and golf next door.
It never matched its bigger neighbors. In 2004 the City Council rezoned the land for condominiums, the hotel closed, and a developer razed it. The Corriente condos stand at its address now.
The record
The hotel. The East Valley Tribune gives it 200 rooms in stories from 2004 and 2005. An old online hotel directory adds the rest: 16 acres, the Cafe on the Lakes restaurant and lounge, 15,000 square feet of meeting space for up to 600, a fitness center, a heated pool, and an “on-site” 18-hole course, the Scottsdale Silverado Golf Club, next door at 7605 E. Indian Bend. Course listings date Silverado to 2000, so the golf came late in the hotel’s life.
The settlement. In 1999 its owner, Town King Enterprises, signed a settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice under the Americans with Disabilities Act. It committed the SunSpree to accessible rooms, routes and public spaces, and it’s the clearest official record of the hotel’s name, address and owner.
The end. In May 2004 the Tribune reported that Starpointe, a Scottsdale condominium developer, had agreed to buy the property, and that the council had already approved its zoning “to be razed and rebuilt as a condominium complex.” By late June the hotel had “already shut down operations.” When the Tribune covered the coming closing of the Radisson on Scottsdale Road the next March, it called the SunSpree “now defunct,” and a city official said it had been much less successful than its neighbor.
What’s there now. The Corriente condominiums at 7601 E. Indian Bend Rd, about 192 units in three-story buildings. Real-estate listings date them to about 2008 and name Starpointe as the builder.
The sources, and what they leave open
Main sources: Joan Fudala’s 2022 column on the Indian Bend and Scottsdale Road corner and her 2025 list of lost places; the Department of Justice’s 1999 settlement; three East Valley Tribune stories from 2004 and 2005; an undated hotel directory page; and condo listings for the site.
What’s unsettled:
- Opening year. 1977 in Fudala’s 2022 column, 1978 in her 2025 list. We use 1977, the date in her fuller account.
- The Radisson years. Only Fudala says it opened as a Radisson, and we’ve found no other trace of the Timber Bridge Inn name. Nor have we found when Holiday Inn took over. There’s room for a mix-up: the Registry Resort opened the same year a few hundred yards away on Scottsdale Road and was itself rebranded a Radisson in the late 1990s, and the two closed within months of each other.
- “A McCormick Ranch resort.” It’s often grouped with the ranch’s hotels, and the street address is right across from the ranch, but the site sits on the south side of Indian Bend Road, below the master-planned community.
- The demolition date and Corriente’s completion are known only from listings, not news.
Where the answers are. The Scottsdale Progress and Arizona Republic for 1977 and 1978 (the opening and its name), the city’s zoning case for the 2004 condo conversion, and Holiday Inn’s own directories, which would show when the SunSpree flag went up.
Why it matters
The SunSpree is the ordinary side of Scottsdale’s resort boom. The famous resorts of the 1970s are still open. This was one of the mid-sized hotels that filled in around them, changed flags as brands came and went, and ended the way many did once the land was worth more than the hotel: rezoned, razed and rebuilt as condos.