LaPour Partners is planning a large-scale hotel conversion at Arizona Center, targeting a vacant 19-story office tower in downtown Phoenix for redevelopment into a 340-room JW Marriott. The property, located at 400 E. Van Buren St., once housed office tenants but has seen conditions deteriorate over the past decade to decade and a half, leaving the building empty and underutilized.
The planned JW Marriott hotel carries an estimated development cost of $200 million. The project site is positioned across the street from the 1,000-room Sheraton Phoenix Downtown, placing the future hotel directly within the city’s established convention and hospitality corridor. Arizona Center itself was originally constructed in the early 1990s, but the office tower has not maintained its earlier performance and is now slated for a comprehensive interior overhaul.
Plans for the hotel program call for a full-service offering with a range of amenities. The JW Marriott is expected to include new restaurants, a resort-style pool, a fitness center, ballroom and meeting spaces, and a club lounge situated on the upper levels of the tower. As part of the redesign, the upper floors are expected to feature approximately 15,000 square feet of meeting and ballroom space, aligning the building’s future use with group, corporate and event demand in the downtown Phoenix market.
At present, the Arizona Center office tower is fully vacant, and the hotel conversion remains in the design and pre-development stage. Interior demolition work is anticipated to begin in early 2027, with full construction slated to follow later that year. According to the current schedule, the JW Marriott at Arizona Center is expected to open in 2029, marking the transition of a long-struggling office asset into a new hospitality use in the downtown core.
The repositioning of the Arizona Center tower reflects a significant change in how the property will be utilized going forward, shifting from traditional office tenancy to lodging and event-oriented operations. While detailed financing terms, ownership structure and hotel operating arrangements have not been disclosed, the project timeline indicates a multi-year redevelopment process moving from planning through demolition, construction and eventual delivery by the end of the decade.
