James Hotel
Scottsdale, Ariz.
Deborah Berke & Partners Architects

Deborah Berke & Partners Architects drenches a desert hot spot in color mixed with modernism

© Eric Laignel

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By Ingrid Whitehead

Famous for its luxurious resorts and spas, abundant golf courses, and upwards of 330 days of blazing sunshine per year, Scottsdale, Arizona, a suburb of Phoenix, is an oasis in the heart of the Sonoran Desert. Yet New York restaurateur Steve Hanson and Equinox Gym founder Danny Errico saw the city, with resort hotel rooms priced at an average of $300–$400 per night, as a place that needed a more moderately priced boutique hotel, not to mention something other than adobe and cacti. "There was this gigantic void in Scottsdale," says Hanson, who is president of the B.R. Guest restaurant group, which owns the W Hotel’s Blue Fin, as well as Fiamma Osteria and Ruby Foo’s, among others, in New York, and Fiamma Trattoria in Las Vegas. Hanson and Errico brought in New York firm Deborah Berke & Partners Architects to design Scottsdale’s James Hotel, the first of a planned chain around the country.

Hanson found a 1970s-era hotel on a 7-acre site adjacent to Scottsdale’s historic Old Town. The building was partially gutted and totally renovated to produce 200 rooms; 10,000 square feet of flexible event space; a 350-seat Fiamma Trattoria restaurant ; a 2,700-square-foot, state-of-the-art fitness center; as well as a bar and two pools.

With the existing buildings forming a campus, Berke kept the envelopes of the 325-square-foot rooms in five 3-story buildings. These are accessible to each other and the building containing all public spaces by outdoor corridors, maintaining the campus feel and blurring the boundaries between indoors and out.

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Formal name of Project:
James Hotel

Location:
Scottsdale, Ariz.

Gross square footage:
136,000 sq. ft.

Owner:
James Hotels

Architect:
Deborah Berke & Partners Architects
211 West 19th Street
New York, New York 10011
P: 212-229-9211 f: 212-989-3347
www.dberke.com