What is the Scottsdale Marriott at McDowell Mountains?
The name promises mountains and delivers a golf course, and that’s a fair trade. The Scottsdale Marriott at McDowell Mountains opened in 1999 at the north end of the Perimeter Center, the office park west of Pima Road and north of the Loop 101. Its back lawn runs right into TPC Scottsdale, and the McDowells are the purple ridge on the horizon.
What sets it apart from the business hotels around it is the floor plan. All of its roughly 266 rooms are two-room suites: a bedroom with a door, and a living room with a sofa bed and a work desk. In a part of town built for weeklong sales meetings and February golf trips, that second room is the reason to book here. Parents get a door between them and the kids. Consultants get a place to take a call that isn’t their bed.
The rest is classic full-service Marriott: one pool and hot tub, a fitness center, room service, and a big meeting operation for its size. On site there’s one restaurant, AGAVE SW Bar & Grill, which serves three meals a day and has a patio facing west across the Champions Course at sunset.
Who it’s for: Airpark business travelers, golfers who want TPC within walking distance, families who need the extra room, and anyone in town for the WM Phoenix Open. Who should stay elsewhere: anyone who wants nightlife within walking distance. That means Old Town, about 20 to 25 minutes south.
How to do the McDowell Mountains Marriott right
Get the golf-course side. The building is long and low, and a room facing TPC looks out on fairways and sunsets, while the other side looks at the office park. Ask at booking and again at check-in.
Budget for the extras. Self-parking and valet are both paid, and a nightly destination fee goes on top of the rate. If you don’t need a car every day, it may be cheaper to ride in from Sky Harbor (about 22 miles) and drive only when you have to.
Know the calendar. This is the Princess, TPC and WestWorld event district. In late January and February, Barrett-Jackson and the Arabian Horse Show fill WestWorld a mile east, and the Phoenix Open takes over the golf course next door. Rates jump and the roads jam. The survival guide is worth reading before you come. On a quiet October weekday, the same suite is one of north Scottsdale’s easy bargains.
Eat across the fairway. AGAVE works for breakfast and a sunset drink. For dinner, Toro sits in the TPC clubhouse overlooking the 18th green, and the Fairmont Princess has Bourbon Steak and La Hacienda, all a short drive around the course.
Bring the dog, within limits. The hotel takes one pet up to about 40 pounds, for a per-stay fee.
The office park that met a golf course
Before golf arrived, there was no reason to build a hotel here. In the early 1980s, the land north of the Airpark was open desert crossed by the Central Arizona Project canal. In December 1985 Scottsdale signed a lease with the PGA Tour for Bureau of Reclamation land and city parcels north of the canal. On that land came the Tom Weiskopf–Jay Morrish Stadium Course, opened in 1986, and the Phoenix Open arrived the next year. The Scottsdale Princess opened beside it in 1987. Golf and the resort set the tone for everything nearby.
The office development followed the money. South and west, the Airpark, which grew out of a 1942 Army training field, became one of the biggest job centers in Greater Phoenix. Between the Airpark and the golf, the Perimeter Center grew into an office park of its own. Once the Loop 101 was finished in 2002, it was a freeway exit from anywhere in the Valley. By 2004, Host Marriott was calling it “one of the fastest growing office parks in the Phoenix area.”
The McDowell Mountains Marriott opened in 1999 as a bet on both sides of that line: a suite hotel for the people working in those offices that would also sell golf views to everyone else. The bet worked well enough that Host Marriott, a hotel real-estate trust, paid $57.5 million for it in September 2004. Its description then listed about 270 two-room suites, marble baths and roughly 10 acres “adjacent to two championship-level golf courses.” The course outside the windows has changed since. In 2007, TPC’s old Desert Course reopened as the redesigned Champions Course, the cheaper public sibling of the Stadium Course and the one most locals actually play.
The hotel shows how north Scottsdale grew. The resorts came first, then the offices, and then hotels built in between that could serve both. During the week it’s an Airpark business hotel. In February, when 700,000-plus people come to the Phoenix Open, it’s one of the closest hotels to the grandstands.