Not just for Cowboys and Tourists anymore!!! Scottsdale is now a booming sophisticated city of nearly 225,000 residents, growing daily, and the majority are year around residents enjoying a resort type lifestyle along with fabulous schools and family activities.
Scottsdale's beginnings were around what is now called Old Town but soon sprawled to what is now 184.5 square miles. There are many wonderful neighborhoods in the older areas of the city and many varied Master Planned Communities and luxury estate communities dotted throughout the vast area. When the heighth restrictions were lifted in the early 2000's a surge of high rise projects hit the drawing board and the result was many downtown loft and luxury condominium communities adding a totally new urban sophistication to our lifestyle, particularly attractive to the local young professional singles as well as winter visitors or second home owners wanting the "lock and go lifestyle".
Few places can rival the upscale shopping of Scottsdale: The Borgata, Kierland Commons, Scottsdale Fashion Square and it's newest addition of The Waterfront, Old Town's boutiques and art galleries all are just the beginning as new shopping meccas are being created in the north at this moment.
Hundreds of technology and other large corporations call Scottsdale home and the new addition of Skysong in south Scottsdale will bring ASU and BioTech Companies for research and development. Add to this the 50+ Resorts located in or close to Scottsdale providing even more fine dining, fun and special summer rates for the locals.
Scottsdale's beautiful 300+ days of dry sunshine annually also brought some problems during the winter rains and monsoon months of middle summer. The dry packed desert floor provided no drainage for even an inch of rain. Sophisticated engineering to resolve this problem resulted in miles of wonderful greenbelt areas running through south to north of the city, .providing runoff for the winter snow of northern Arizona and drainage for the "average 7 inches" of annual rain. The huge benefits of this are wonderful activities for year around and winter residents from the public golf courses, baseball parks (and Cactus League Winter Training), swimming parks, tennis parks, several parks with lakes for fishing, boating and picnic areas and our latest over 3 acre Dog Park...all with biking and jogging/walking paths weaving throughout.
All of Scottsdale residents enjoy the benefits of the resort lifestyle, cultural activities, a top rated excelling Scottsdale School District, 6 public libraries, 4 major medical facilities, a huge network of Religious affiliations, sports activities of all kinds, several local and regional theater groups,and easy access to all of the activities in The Valley of The Sun with the recent completion of our Freeway System.
The citrus farms planted by our original settles, The Scott Brothers, were part of one of the first communities known as Arcadia...mostly built in the 1950 with homes on large lots with lush irrigated green lawns and plentiful citrus throughout. Homes in this area can range in price from the high $500's to over $3.5 million...and many have fabulous views of one of our favorite landmarks, Camelback Mountain. Arcadia is located in the area south and west of Old Town and provides easy access to downtown Phoenix.
Old or South Scottsdale was built up mostly in the 1950's to the 1970's and has enjoyed a revival in the past 10 years with it's modestly sized (1500-2200 S/F) homes on nice sized lots being updated with values continually rising to where now a "typical" 1980 S./F 4 bedroom 2 bath 2 car garage home could cost between $350,000 and $450,000 in mid 2007. This area also has many condos and townhouse communities very popular with our early winter visitors and becoming increasingly more in demand with the growth and resurgence of the Downtown Scottsdale area; it's nightlife, cultural activity and easy access to everything in the valley.
During the development of the Master Planned Communities close in Scottsdale (McCormick Ranch, Gainey Ranch and Scottsdale Ranch) in the 1970's and 80's another area was being developed north in the foothills called Pinnacle Peak (located just north of Grayhawk and DC Ranch). Originally zoned with minimum one acre restrictions, homes in this area enjoy the wide open desert living and amazing city lights and mountain views on wonderful natural Sonoran Desert acreage! There are now several newer planned communities (Troon, Desert Highlands, Troon North, Sincuidados, Legend Trail and Desert Mountain) located within this geographical area known as Pinnacle Peak and North Scottsdale, but the custom homes on acreage continue to be in high demand...over 100 custom homes on acreage (from 1 to 20 acres) have greeted new owners in the first half of 2007 ranging in sale price from $700 to well over 7 million.
