What is The McCormick Scottsdale?
Most visitors to McCormick Ranch end up at the big conference resort on McCormick Parkway. Its older, smaller neighbor is around the lake on Scottsdale Road. The McCormick Scottsdale opened in the summer of 1975 as the Inn at McCormick Ranch, a year before the Scottsdale Conference Center, and it has been on the shore of Camelback Lake ever since.
It has also changed names more than almost anything else on the Ranch. Over the decades it flew Clarion, Regal and Millennium flags. In 2014 Millennium Hotels and Resorts closed it for a six-month renovation and reopened it in October as The McCormick Scottsdale.
The setup is simple and appealing. There are 125 rooms, suites and two- and three-bedroom villas, many with balconies or patios facing the lake, the golf course or Camelback Mountain. There’s a heated pool, a small lakeside beach, about 13,000 square feet of event space and Piñon Grill, the Southwestern restaurant on the water. The two courses of McCormick Ranch Golf Club are next door, and the Ranch’s path system runs along the lake.
Who’s it for? Golfers, families who want a villa, wedding groups and anyone who wants a quieter, smaller lakeside alternative to the corridor’s big resorts. Who should skip it? Anyone who wants a spa, a big pool scene or a walk to Old Town’s bars, which are three miles south.
How to do The McCormick right
Book the view. The whole point of this hotel is the water. Lake-view rooms and villas put Camelback Lake and Camelback Mountain outside your door; golf-view rooms come second. Ask when you book.
Use the villas for groups. The two- and three-bedroom villas are the hotel’s best value for families and golf foursomes, often cheaper than several rooms at the bigger resorts.
Eat on the lake once. Piñon Grill does Southwestern dishes with a patio over the water; go at sunset. For a bigger night out, Roka Akor is a short drive south on Scottsdale Road, and the Seville center at Indian Bend has everyday options.
Walk or bike the paths. The McCormick Ranch lakes and paths connect to the Indian Bend Wash Greenbelt at McCormick-Stillman Railroad Park, so you can ride to Old Town without crossing much traffic. The railroad park, with its steam train and carousel, is a family favorite.
Ask what the resort fee covers. It has included lake activities and Wi-Fi. Parking is free. Swimming in the lake isn’t allowed; that’s what the heated pool is for, and its poolside bar has had ping-pong and darts for the kids, or for the adults who never grew up.
Know what it isn’t. There’s no spa and no big pool scene. If you want those, book a night at one of the corridor’s larger resorts and come back here for the quiet.
Plan around big weeks. Scottsdale fills up during the WM Phoenix Open, Barrett-Jackson and spring training, so book early for January through March.
The Inn at McCormick Ranch and the resort row around it
The land under The McCormick was cattle and Arabian horse country for a generation. Fowler and Anne McCormick, heirs to the International Harvester and Rockefeller fortunes, put together a ranch of roughly 4,200 acres east of Scottsdale Road starting in the 1940s. In 1970 they sold it to Kaiser-Aetna, which drew up a master plan around man-made lakes, two golf courses and a path system before the first houses went in.
The Inn at McCormick Ranch was one of the plan’s first moves. It opened in the summer of 1975 on Camelback Lake, the same year McCormick-Stillman Railroad Park opened on land Anne McCormick had given the city. Within two years the stretch of Scottsdale Road around it turned into a resort row. The Scottsdale Conference Center, often called the first resort in America built around corporate meetings, opened on the same lake in September 1976; it’s now The Scottsdale Resort at McCormick Ranch. In 1977 the Registry Resort opened just down Scottsdale Road on 36 acres, with a stadium tennis court and showroom entertainment. Lakeside dining followed, including the Chart House pavilion, which served on Camelback Lake for forty-one years until 2025.
Those neighbors had very different fates. The Registry went bankrupt in the 1990s, became a Radisson, closed in 2005 and was demolished in 2007 for condos. The Conference Center eventually joined Hilton’s Curio Collection. The Inn survived by changing hands and flags, as a Clarion, then a Regal, then a Millennium resort with villas. It stayed small, about 125 keys, with no convention wing or golf course of its own.
Millennium’s 2014 renovation gave it the name it has today. The McCormick name ties the hotel back to the ranch family and the master plan that shaped this part of Scottsdale. More than fifty years after it opened, the old Inn is still on its lake, and it’s one of the few pieces of the original 1970s resort row still welcoming guests.