What is SpringHill Suites Phoenix Scottsdale?
SpringHill Suites Phoenix Scottsdale is a 117-suite Marriott hotel that opened in September 2023 at the southwest corner of Scottsdale and McDowell roads. That corner is the southern gateway to south Scottsdale. The name is confusing: despite “Phoenix” coming first, the hotel is inside the City of Scottsdale. It just sits at the bottom of the city, where Scottsdale meets Tempe and Phoenix.
The hotel is plain and practical. Every room is a suite, with a sitting area separated from the bed. Breakfast is included, and you get a heated outdoor pool, a 24-hour gym and a lobby set up for laptops. Because it is newer than nearly every hotel in its price range, you’re paying for clean, modern rooms rather than a scene.
The ground under it is the interesting part. This was Papago Plaza, the pueblo-revival shopping center that marked the edge of town for more than half a century and housed the beloved Papago Brewing taproom. The plaza was demolished in 2019 to make way for apartments, a hotel and new retail. Directly across Scottsdale Road is SkySong, ASU’s innovation campus, built where Los Arcos Mall used to be.
Stay here for the location and the value. Old Town is about two miles north, Sky Harbor about six miles west, and ASU and Scottsdale Stadium are both a short drive. If you want a resort experience, look farther up Scottsdale Road.
How to do the SpringHill right
Lean on the suite. The separate sitting area is useful for families and for work trips where you’d rather not answer email from the bed. With breakfast included and a fridge in the room, plenty of guests only eat out once a day.
Walk to dinner. Fate Brewing, south Scottsdale’s big brewpub, is a short walk down Scottsdale Road. The SkySong side of the street has more casual spots. A short drive gets you to the neighborhood favorites: Los Sombreros and DeFalco’s on Scottsdale Road, and Salt Cellar, the underground seafood house on Hayden.
Budget for valet. Parking is valet only and costs extra each night. If you’re staying a week with a rental car, factor that into your comparison with properties that have free lots.
Exploit the edge-of-town location. Being at the southern edge makes this a strong base for anyone who also needs Tempe, ASU or the airport. Papago Park, the Desert Botanical Garden and the Phoenix Zoo are a few miles west, and the walkable streets of Old Town are ten minutes north.
Spring training. The Giants play at Scottsdale Stadium, about two miles away, and Tempe Diablo Stadium is a quick drive south. Cactus League fans should book well ahead for March, when every room in the area fills. Start with our spring training guide.
Papago Plaza’s second act
Before this hotel, the corner belonged to Papago Plaza, built in 1962 in the pueblo-revival style: adobe-look stucco, rounded parapets and deep-set windows. For decades, if you drove north from Tempe, its kachina sign and earth-toned walls told you that you’d reached Scottsdale. The plaza served the ranch-house neighborhoods that filled south Scottsdale after the war, and it outlasted Los Arcos Mall across the street. It was renovated in 1988, but by the 2000s it was aging in place, a scruffy collection of tenants that included Papago Brewing, the taproom that helped teach the Valley to drink craft beer.
The plaza’s name came from Papago Park and the old Spanish-era label for the Tohono O’odham people. The Nation dropped that name in 1986, though it survives on signs across the Valley.
Redevelopment followed the revival SkySong started on the opposite corner. Developers bought the roughly 13-acre center in 2015 and, after considering a simple facelift, chose a mixed-use rebuild instead: high-end apartments, a hotel, a grocery store, a bank, a parking garage and restaurants arranged around a central park. Pivot Development’s plans promised an orchard-like landscape with mid-century touches, along with reused wooden beams from the 1962 buildings and a mural built around the old kachina sign. The bulldozers came in 2019.
The pieces arrived unevenly. The apartments, the five-story, 276-unit SEVENTYONE15 McDowell, and the hotel came first. PEG Companies developed and operates the 117-suite, roughly 72,000-square-foot SpringHill Suites, which opened in September 2023 with orchard-style landscaping of its own. The grocery and restaurant phases have taken longer than planned.
Marriott launched SpringHill Suites in the late 1990s as an all-suite step up from Fairfield Inn, and the brand has spread across the Valley’s business districts. Putting one here says something about how south Scottsdale is seen now. For years the corner was something people drove past on their way north. Now it’s an address worth building new hotels on.