What is Sentral Old Town?
Sentral Old Town is a new kind of lodging for Scottsdale, so it’s worth being clear about what it is. It isn’t a hotel. It’s a five-story, 160-unit apartment building completed in 2021 on Scottsdale Road just north of Camelback. Some units are leased to ordinary long-term residents. Sentral, the operator, rents others as designer-furnished apartments, either by the night or for extended stays of 30 days or more.
That means guests get an apartment: up to two bedrooms, a full kitchen, a washer-dryer and a front door that opens onto a residential hallway rather than a hotel corridor. The shared amenities feel more like a luxury apartment complex than a hotel: a resort-style pool, a fitness center, coworking space, a rooftop lounge area with fire pit, and a secured garage with EV charging. There’s no restaurant, bar or concierge desk, and in that sense your neighbors are the amenity.
The location is strong. Fashion Square and the Waterfront are a short walk south. The Scott Resort, the 1961 Executive House reborn, is just up the road, along with Postino Highland and Roaring Fork. Old Town’s galleries and bars are a little farther south.
It suits families and groups who need more than one bedroom, snowbirds and remote workers staying weeks at a time, people relocating who want to try out Old Town before signing a lease, and anyone who would rather cook. If you want a hotel — daily housekeeping, room service, a front desk available at 2 a.m. — book one of the Old Town hotels.
How to do Sentral Old Town right
Know what’s included before you arrive. Apartment-style stays differ from hotels on housekeeping, check-in and parking. Before booking, ask how check-in works, whether and how often units are cleaned during your stay, and how guest parking in the garage is handled. Getting answers up front avoids the most common surprises at this kind of property.
Book for the floor plan. Most of the value here is the space. A two-bedroom unit with a kitchen and laundry can cost less than two hotel rooms during busy weeks, and it works much better for a family, two couples or a golf foursome. For spring training, Barrett-Jackson or WM Phoenix Open week, book early.
Use the building like a resident. Work from the coworking space in the morning, swim in the afternoon, and go to the rooftop at sunset. Do laundry in the unit midweek so you can pack light.
Walk south, and drive farther. Fashion Square is the air-conditioned walk on a summer afternoon, the Waterfront and Soleri Bridge work in the evening, and Old Town’s restaurants are a short trolley ride or a longer walk. Use the car for Camelback trailheads and the corridor resorts.
Try out the neighborhood. If you’re moving to Scottsdale, a month here is a low-commitment way to find out whether you like Old Town living before signing a year-long lease.
Old Town’s apartment boom, rented by the night
For most of its history, Old Town’s lodging was easy to categorize: resorts, hotels and motor courts on one side, and homes, condos and apartments on the other. Sentral Old Town operates on both sides.
The building is part of a wave that changed Scottsdale Road north of Camelback. When Fashion Square opened in 1961, and the Executive House Arizonian (today’s The Scott) opened a few blocks north the same year, this stretch was where downtown Scottsdale gave way to resort-town sprawl. The mall grew into the largest in the Southwest, and in the 2000s the Waterfront turned the Arizona Canal into an address for condo towers. The five-story, 160-unit building at 4735 N Scottsdale Road, completed in 2021, extends that shift toward people living, not just visiting, within walking distance of Old Town.
Sentral’s model, operating “hybrid” buildings, is a response to a broader shift in travel. Remote work turned month-long stays from an oddity into a regular market, and short-term rentals showed that many travelers prefer a kitchen and a living room to a hotel room. Sentral’s approach is to rent furnished apartments itself, by the night or by the month, under one operator and alongside conventional leases in the same building. It lists locations in cities from Seattle and San Francisco to Atlanta, Miami and Philadelphia, plus a separate Phoenix property.
In Scottsdale, the model has particular appeal. The city’s visitors include an unusual share of long-stayers: snowbirds who come for the winter, spring-training regulars, golfers in groups and families on extended visits. All of them have long been underserved by hotel rooms. Sentral gives them a downtown address with a kitchen and a pool, at the cost of the services a hotel would provide.
Whether this becomes a lasting category or a 2020s trend remains to be seen. For now, it means a visitor to Old Town can stay in a new apartment building as a short-term resident.