A 19-Story Phoenix Office Tower Is Being Gutted for a 340-Room Luxury Hotel

Developer LaPour Partners is moving ahead with plans to convert a 19-story office tower in downtown Phoenix into a 340-room JW Marriott, the firm confirmed in August. The property would sit inside the mixed-use Arizona Center, with a resort-style pool, outdoor event space, a fitness center and 15,000 square feet of meeting space.

The pitch is that downtown Phoenix has grown faster than its hotel stock. Founder and CEO Jeff LaPour called the market "underserved when it comes to luxury hospitality," pointing to population growth, new multifamily investment and rising convention activity. Demand drivers within walking distance include the Phoenix Convention Center, Arizona State University's downtown campus, the Phoenix Biomedical campus and Chase Field.

Why an office building

The tower's bones are the reason this works. Thirteen-foot floor-to-floor heights and an unusually deep floor plate allow oversized guest rooms - the kind of layout that is expensive to build new and nearly impossible to retrofit into a standard office slab. Adaptive reuse also skips the longest part of a ground-up timeline in a market where construction costs have not come down.

Phoenix has been drawing luxury demand for years, though most of it has landed outside the city core. Scottsdale holds the region's established high-end properties, including The Phoenician and Four Seasons Resort Scottsdale at Troon North, while Castle Hot Springs serves the remote-retreat end of the Arizona market. A downtown JW Marriott would be aimed at a different guest: the business traveler and event planner who currently drives 20 miles for a comparable room.

The project is still in planning, and LaPour has not released a construction timeline or opening date.