City of Scottsdale, Arizona

CSL assisted the City of Scottsdale, Arizona in preparing a comprehensive tourism industry strategic development plan for downtown Scottsdale.  The strategic planning effort included a focus on maximizing both the downtown’s economic performance and the City’s return-on-investment for product development initiatives that significantly improve the unique and authentic visitor experience and industry market share.  The primary goal of the Plan was to identify and prioritize initiatives that better leverage existing destination strengths and mitigate against destination challenges.  CSL focused on visitor industry investment that both continues to grow the existing customer base and that is designed to attract the next generation of visitor. 

CSL led a significant research-based and collaborative initiative that included extensive outreach to destination stakeholders and visitor industry representations nationally.  CSL provided recommendations based around several broad areas of opportunity, including: 

  • Leveraging city-owned real estate to develop large-scale event, public art and gathering spaces. 

  • Significantly enhancing the pedestrian experience, including development of programmable pocket art spaces. 

  • Revitalizing the arts and culture buzz by galvanizing the arts community and building on existing assets. 

  • Developing partnerships between galleries, museums, hotels, dining and other hospitality sectors. 

  • Planning for several new citywide, multi-faceted festivals. 

  • Re-thinking and enhancing the downtown trolley system. 

  • Providing a technological approach to downtown parking and navigability. 

  • Increasing square footage for office and residential to better support retail, dining and other aspects of downtown vibrancy. 

In addition, the Plan included estimates for necessary public services and infrastructure to support increased visitor and population levels, such as parking inventory, bike accessibility, way-finding, walkability, fire/police support and downtown maintenance.  CSL’s evaluation also included broad cost, financial return and management initiatives associated with the various visitor industry investment opportunities.