Scottsdale Quarter is a 28-acre, mixed-use development, incorporating the best elements of Arizona's arid climate and Scottsdale's prestigious location to create a premier experience of luxury shopping, employment, and living. Design Workshop was retained by the client to do the landscape and urban design to create an establishment that stood out from the saturation of other ambience-oriented projects in the region, and to help provide residents some relief from the heat.

The Backdrop
According to data from the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Association, the average daily temperature in the state of Arizona has increased 2.5 degrees since the turn of the century. Nighttime lows have risen 5.7 degrees in the Phoenix Metropolitan area since 1970 and forecasters are projecting that daytime temperatures will continue to rise by another 10 degrees by 2100, making heat and carbon emissions two of the most life-threatening factors for people in the region.

Coupled with the increase in temperatures, the on-going drought in the southwest is causing concern because Phoenix is dependent on water from the Colorado River Basin, and recently the Federal Government mandated that Arizona needed to prepare for receiving 20% less water in the coming years. Despite its environmental challenges, the Phoenix metropolitan region is still attracting new companies requiring real estate developers to plan and build new housing, office complexes, and mixed-use districts.

The Project Commences
In 2006, Glimcher Realty bought the former Dial Soap headquarters building, a 10-acre site in the heart of Scottsdale's emerging retail and resort area, north of its historic downtown.

 
From the time the development and design team was formed, they knew that the plan for this site was to be a mixed-use project that anticipated the impacts of climate change through the inclusion of buildings and streets that were compact in order to create shade, and which would be unlike anything done before in the region. To understand how to create a tight, urban district, the team visited several cities, ultimately using Manhattan's meat packing district and Boston's Italian neighborhood as benchmarks.

The Construct
Working closely together, Design Workshop, a landscape architecture, land planning, and urban design firm, and the developer, Nelsen Partners, envisioned Scottsdale Quarter guided by three primary goals. The first was to maximize building density by designing all the structures to the maximum height that the city would allow, which is 60 feet. The second goal was to designate that all streets be no more than 75 feet from building face to building face to ensure maximum shading, especially in summertime. And the final goal was to design a monumental public space as the icon for the district that would become a civic destination for Scottsdale's growing population.

To achieve these goals, the design team worked closely with city offices to allow for narrower street cross-sections than were typically allowed to make it comfortable to be outside all year long. The project was constructed in three phases, starting in 2008 and culminating in the last phase which was completed in 2018.

Making the Construct a Reality

Design Workshop, which has been providing design and planning services for nearly five decades to developers, property owners, government agencies and other clients, knew that creating a dense, urban project like Scottsdale Quarter would require the accommodation of a large public space so that people from the city and the region could enjoy a civic plaza designed with shade, human comfort, and community activities at the top of the priority list. The culmination of that design idea is the Palm Court, which offers patrons shade, food, and sculptural water features that create civic scale and outdoor activities.

Known affectionately as the Quad, the space is approximately 135-feet-wide and nearly 500-feet-long and designated for pedestrian use only. One of the aspects that makes the Quad different from any other public plaza in the Phoenix Metropolitan region are the tightly-spaced date palms that effectively provide a green canopy over people, creating soft shade and cooler plaza temperatures for all that come out to participate in the amenities the Scottsdale Quarter has to offer.

Additionally, the Quad features an interactive water feature for kids and families to enjoy that utilizing recaptured water and only operating for certain periods of the day as an effort to conserve the precious resource.
Finally, the Quad was designed to host formal events such as concerts, farmer's markets and corporate parties, providing additional revenues for the owner and city.

The final outcomes of the project, according to Design Workshop, were in large part due to the firm's DW Legacy Design?,?(R) concept, a comprehensive approach to planning and design focused on delivering measurable project outcomes in the areas of environment, community, economics, and art - four values that the company feels are essential to human meaning and the spirit of place.

Reaping the Rewards
Approaching its 15th year in business, Scottsdale Quarter has been extremely successful for the owners, the city, and the community, and viewed as a gold standard for mixed-use development in the Phoenix Metropolitan Region. Its success, in part, can be attributed to the original goals that the developer and design team established, which was to make this project comfortable for people to use year-round, knowing that climate change was happening and would become worse in time.

The project exemplifies that design is a key element in dealing with climate change by planning mixed-use projects like Scottsdale Quarter that are smart, resilient, comfortable, and attractive to people who want to live outside as much as they can.