Year: 2001
Location: Scottsdale, Arizona
Client: The Mazon Group
Type: Neighborhood Retail / Office Center
Size: +/- 60,000 SF Retail Shops
Status: Completed and operational
Role: James Easton, AIA, NCARB, Project Architect – Conceptual Design and Development
Firm: Tyndall Associates, Architect of Record

The Center at Troon North

The Center at Troon North is an approximately 60,000-square-foot neighborhood retail and office center at Dynamite Boulevard and Alma School Parkway in North Scottsdale, Arizona. Completed in 2001, the project was developed to provide everyday commercial services within the growing residential communities surrounding Troon North, combining retail, restaurants, professional offices, and neighborhood services within a distinctly pedestrian-oriented setting.

Rather than approaching the project as a conventional suburban strip center, the design organizes the buildings around shaded walks, courtyards, patios, balconies, and a series of smaller architectural elements intended to make a relatively substantial commercial development feel comfortable within its desert residential setting. Deep arcades, tiled roofs, masonry, stone, shaded storefronts, and second-floor terraces respond to the climate while establishing a scale closer to a village center than a freestanding commercial block.

The architecture was developed through direct work with the client from the earliest design discussions through approvals and construction documentation. Particular attention was given to how people would actually experience the center: arriving from the surrounding neighborhoods, walking between businesses, meeting outdoors, finding shade, and using the upper-level offices without separating them from the activity below.

During design, the developers described a simple ambition for the project. They imagined being older someday, meeting for coffee in the courtyard, and remembering when the place existed only as an idea. That became an unusually useful measure of what the architecture was supposed to accomplish. The goal was not simply to complete a development, but to make a place capable of becoming familiar.

More than twenty-five years later, that test is meaningful. The Center at Troon North remains an active retail and office destination, with long-established neighborhood services and businesses continuing to operate from the property. Current leasing information still describes it as the area’s established commercial center, while local residents continue to use the property for routine services and community activities.

The project demonstrates a quieter measure of architectural success: endurance. Tenants change, signs change, landscapes mature, and communities grow around a building. What matters after twenty-five years is whether the architecture can absorb those changes and remain useful, recognizable, and valued as part of everyday life. The Center at Troon North has done that.

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