What is the Residence Inn Scottsdale North?
It is precisely what the name promises, which in north Scottsdale is a virtue. The Residence Inn Scottsdale North is a three-story, 120-suite Marriott extended-stay hotel that opened in 2002 at the southeast corner of Scottsdale Road and the intersection where Bell Road changes its name to Frank Lloyd Wright Boulevard as it crosses into Scottsdale. Every room is a suite with a kitchen; breakfast is a hot buffet that comes with the rate; there’s an outdoor pool, a whirlpool and a fitness room.
The address is the asset. You’re about a mile from Scottsdale Airport and the Airpark’s office parks, across the street from the Scottsdale Promenade and its Trader Joe’s, and a mile and a half from Kierland Commons and Scottsdale Quarter. It’s also on the correct side of the road: Scottsdale Road is the city line here, and this odd-numbered address puts the hotel inside Scottsdale, while its sister Courtyard and SpringHill Suites across the street are technically in Phoenix.
Who is it for? Consultants on a three-week Airpark project, families house-hunting before a move, patients and caregivers on a medical stay, and winter visitors testing whether a month in Scottsdale suits them. Who should stay elsewhere: anyone who came for a resort pool scene or a walkable night out. For that, look to Old Town or the Westin Kierland down the road.
How to do the Residence Inn Scottsdale North right
Use the kitchen like you mean it. The Promenade’s Trader Joe’s is a short walk across Frank Lloyd Wright. Stock up the first evening, and breakfast plus a packed lunch are covered for the week. On a long stay, that adds up to real money.
Pick your side of the building. Scottsdale Road is a six-lane commuter road, and Frank Lloyd Wright is notorious for weekday rush-hour traffic. Ask for a suite facing into the property rather than the street.
Plan around the event calendar. January’s Barrett-Jackson auction and the Arabian Horse Show at WestWorld, early February’s WM Phoenix Open at TPC Scottsdale, and March’s spring training push north Scottsdale occupancy to the ceiling. If your dates land in that run, book well ahead.
Eat one exit away. For dinner without a car, Picazzo’s is in the Promenade. A five-minute drive gets you to Kierland’s restaurant row: North Italia, Dominick’s, Eddie V’s.
Know what it isn’t. It’s a well-run suite hotel, not a resort. The pool is for a swim and a paperback. If you want the Scottsdale postcard for a night, book a splurge at the Fairmont Princess a few miles east and keep this as your base. For everything else, from a month of Airpark meetings to a house-hunting trip, the suite does the job.
How the Airpark grew a hotel row
The ground this hotel stands on was open desert and farm fringe for most of Scottsdale’s history. The thing that changed it sits a mile to the southeast: the runway the Army built in 1942 for Thunderbird Field II, a wartime primary flight school that put more than 5,500 cadets through Stearman biplanes. The city bought the old field in 1966. It became Scottsdale Airport, and around it grew the Airpark, a business district of hangars, offices and light industry that turned into one of the largest employment centers in the city.
For decades, though, the Airpark’s visitors stayed somewhere else, at the resorts down Scottsdale Road or in Old Town. That changed in the 1990s and 2000s. North Scottsdale’s subdivisions filled in, the Loop 101 arrived around the turn of the millennium, and the corner of Scottsdale Road and Bell became a commercial crossroads. The Promenade opened on the northeast corner, Kierland Commons a mile south, and a run of select-service and extended-stay hotels followed the office workers north. The Residence Inn’s 2002 opening belongs to that wave. So does the cluster of Marriott-family hotels facing it across Scottsdale Road, which is the city line.
That line matters more than it looks. Because Scottsdale Road divides the two cities here, the east side pays Scottsdale’s bed taxes and the west side pays Phoenix’s, even though everyone uses the same Scottsdale mailing address. The Residence Inn is one of the corner’s true Scottsdale hotels.
The more recent story is about money, not buildings. A renovation in the late 2010s kept the suites current. In June 2023, a joint venture of Summit Hotel Properties and Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC bought the hotel for a reported $29 million, adding it to the Courtyard and SpringHill Suites it already owned across the road and putting all three under one management company. To institutional owners, a 120-suite Residence Inn a mile from a busy business airport is about as dependable an asset as Arizona hospitality offers.
To a visitor, the takeaway is simpler. Scottsdale’s economy is not only resorts and spring training. It’s also the Airpark’s weekday traffic, and this hotel was built to serve it.