How Optima McDowell Mountain offers sustainable luxury living

Located at the intersection of Scottsdale Road and the Loop 101, Optima McDowell Mountain will bring world-class multifamily living to the growing North Scottsdale area. The project adds 1,330 units to the market across a half dozen eight-story towers — four offering luxury apartments and the remaining two dedicated to condominiums. Additionally, this mixed-use development includes 36,000 square feet of retail at build out and 14 acres of open space.

Residents will have access to gold standard amenities, such as a fitness center, indoor basketball court, pilates studio, movie theater, party room with a full kitchen, pet park and spa, two outdoor pickleball courts and more.

Thanks to an updated HVAC system with a smaller footprint, David Hovey Jr., president, COO and principal architect of Optima, explains that roof will be utilized for additional resort-style features, including a heated Olympic-length lap pool, spa, cold plunge, sauna and walking track — complete with a panoramic vantage point of the surrounding beauty.

“We put planter boxes that slope down from the pool to the track. Without that, people would be looking at a handrail whenever they sat down,” he continues. “This way, your viewscape is opened up another 30 degrees — it’s pretty spectacular.”

Featuring Optima’s signature cascading vertical gardens, the six concrete-framed buildings were designed to emulate the surrounding desert through its color selection and the site’s varied elevations are intended to mimic the shape of the McDowell Mountains in the distance.

A 10-acre courtyard will be accessible to the public, featuring indigenous landscaping, seating, fire pits, a recreation area and putting greens. When combined with the additional 4 acres of private areas, 75% of the development will be reserved for open space — providing a community asset while reducing the heat island effect.

Encircling the project will be a 14-foot-wide bicycle and pedestrian trail approximately 3,150 feet long that culminates in a plaza connected to the project’s retail offerings along Scottsdale Road.

Hovey Jr. adds that this path was designed to integrate with the city’s Bicycle Master Plan, which already has more than 200 miles of existing bike lanes. The goal, he continues, is to be the catalyst for a “mini-Amsterdam,” where people can ride their bikes across the North Airpark subregion.

Just east of Optima McDowell Mountain, ASM is opening its new 250,000-square-foot North American headquarters, and Hovey Jr. says the company has agreed to continue the bike path through its site and hopes that it will be adopted throughout the entire area.

“We were lucky that right after we went under contract, Mayo Clinic announced their expansion, Banner Health and HonorHealth started bidding on land, and Axon located nearby too,” he continues. “It’ll be a totally different landscape here five years from now.”

Optima McDowell Mountain: Scenic and sustainable

Proposing any development in the Valley comes with concerns around water use, and Optima McDowell Mountain was no exception. When the project was going through the zoning and permitting process in 2022, Hovey Jr. felt like everything was going smoothly — until he started getting calls from councilmembers.

“The federal government had threatened to take Scottsdale down to a Tier 2b shortage,” he continues. “We thought all five votes were lined up, but water became a big political issue. People on the council told me, ‘David, we’re sorry, but it’s going to be hard voting yes for this project if we go into Tier 2b. How are we going to tell people they can only water their lawns at certain times while approving all these new deals?’”

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To better understand the amount of water the project would require, Optima analyzed the usage numbers at its Kierland property to establish a baseline. When factoring in irrigation, pools, common amenities and residences, the company found that each unit at the McDowell Mountain development will use one quarter of the water a single-family home consumes and half of what a typical multifamily apartment needs.

The project features an underground concreate vault that can capture and store approximately 210,000 gallons of rainwater — the largest privately-held harvesting system of its kind in the U.S. Those supplies can then be utilized for the landscaping, which when combined with the latest irrigation technology, helps keep Optima McDowell Mountain’s water demands low.

“We’re able to designate specific zones based on how much sun exposure there is, meaning we can have those areas get more or less water,” Hovey Jr. explains. “A lot of projects will have the irrigation system running whether it needs to be or not, and that has a huge effect on the amount of water used.”

What helped convince the city, Hovey Jr. continues, was Optima’s purchase and delivery of 2,750 acre-feet of water from SRP. According to the company’s calculations, that is a large enough supply to meet the development’s needs — with every unit occupied — for three decades.

“Scottsdale was very conservative with their numbers, and gave us credit for 15 years, but McDowell Mountain will have zero water burden for 30 years,” he concludes. “We’re also the first project in the city to be built under both the 2021 International Energy Conservation Code and 2021 International Green Construction Code. It’s the most sustainable community we’ve ever created.”