Most people who bought a home backing up to the Mesquite golf course at Westin Kierland assumed the fairway view was permanent. It wasn't a deed restriction. It wasn't a conservation easement. It was a line on a city land-use map that said "Parks/Open Space, Privately Owned," and lines on maps can move if enough paperwork gets filed. That's the part of this story most neighbors are still catching up to, and it's the part that actually determines how this ends.
If you live anywhere near Greenway Parkway between 66th and 69th Streets, you've probably seen the yard signs, heard about the HOA meetings, or watched a neighbor explain to a reporter what it's like to stare down a future four-story condo building from their patio. Here's where things actually stand, what the numbers really mean, and why the quiet stretch since spring doesn't mean the issue has gone away.
Nine Holes, Two Very Different Proposals
Host Hotels & Resorts, the company that owns the Westin Kierland Resort & Spa, filed an application with the City of Phoenix to rezone the resort's nine-hole Mesquite Golf Course, roughly 71.8 acres, from open space into a mixed residential development called the Copper Residences Planned Unit Development. The other two nine-hole courses, Ironwood and Acacia, aren't part of the application and would keep operating as an 18-hole course.
The plan splits the Mesquite footprint into two pieces. Development Unit 1 covers 16.16 acres north of Greenway Parkway, adjacent to the resort and Kierland Greens, and is planned for higher-density attached housing, condos or condo-hotel units, in buildings up to four stories and 54 feet, with rooftop decks pushing higher. Development Unit 2 covers 55.64 acres south of Greenway, running to Acoma Drive, and is planned for a mix of two- and three-story townhomes, patio homes, and detached single-family houses at building heights between 35 and 45 feet.
After months of public meetings, petition drives, and a resident-funded GoFundMe campaign called "Keep Kierland Green" that cleared $20,000 in contributions, Host submitted a revised application in May 2026. The headline change: the total number of housing units dropped from roughly 800 in the original filing to just under 500 in the revised one, according to reporting from ABC15. That's a cut of nearly 40 percent.
It sounds like a real concession, and it is one. But look at what didn't move. The footprint being converted from golf to housing is still the same 71.8 acres, meaning roughly 80 percent of the current course would become residential land, leaving about a fifth as open space. The building heights in the north parcel didn't come down either, still topping out at 54 feet. What changed was density within the same boundary, not the boundary itself.
Why "Open Space" Didn't Mean What Residents Thought
Kierland itself is a useful reminder of how much can change under a master plan. When developer Woodbine and the Herberger family brought the original 730-acre Kierland concept to the city in 1991, it was, at the time, the largest rezoning case in Phoenix's history. The golf courses, the retail corridor that became Kierland Commons, the resort towers, all of it exists because a general plan designation was approved once and has been amended piece by piece ever since.
That history matters here because it explains the legal mechanism driving the current fight. The Mesquite course sits under a "Parks/Open Space, Privately Owned" designation in the city's general plan. That's a land-use category, not a conservation status, and Host's application asks the city to change it to two new residential zoning districts, DU1 and DU2, the same kind of general plan amendment that built the neighborhood in the first place.
Mark LaPalm, who has lived in Kierland for two decades and leads the Kierland Homeowners Association, put the emotional stakes plainly to AZFamily: he said the open space was one of the reasons he moved there, and that neighbors had bought into the master-planned community believing the golf courses would always remain. Greg Forsythe, whose home backs directly onto the course, told the same station what the north parcel's height limits would mean for him in practical terms: a first-floor condo view followed by 54 feet of stucco.
Amy Satterfield of the Kierland Community Alliance, the resident group formed in 2019 specifically to weigh in on development proposals in the area, has framed the opposition around more than sightlines, citing traffic volume, sewer capacity, and the loss of habitat on a course that carries Audubon certification.
None of that changes the underlying fact: the open space was always contingent on a zoning designation the city could revisit, and that's exactly what's happening now.
Where the Process Actually Stands Right Now
Here's the part that's easy to miss if you're not checking city records regularly. As of this summer, no hearing date had been scheduled. The Kierland Community Alliance's own project tracker noted that a June hearing wasn't expected, and that scheduling decisions remain entirely with the city and can shift.
The approval chain still has three stops left:
- The Paradise Valley Village Planning Committee holds an information-only presentation one month, then votes the following month, once a hearing is finally scheduled.
- The City of Phoenix Planning Commission reviews the committee's recommendation next.
- The Phoenix City Council makes the final call, and that decision isn't expected for months once the process resumes.
The application is currently sitting in city staff review following that May resubmittal, which is a normal, often slow stretch of any rezoning case. It's not evidence the project has stalled or that opposition has won. It's the bureaucratic middle of a process that, by the city's own sequencing, still has at least three more public votes ahead of it.
A Precedent Worth Watching
This isn't the first time Host has run this playbook. The company took a similar approach at The Phoenician Resort on Camelback Road, converting golf course acreage into residential units while keeping 18 holes in play, a project that, per Arizona Builder's Exchange reporting, is now under construction. If you want a sense of how a Host-led golf-to-housing conversion tends to land once it clears city review, that's the closest comparison available, and it suggests these applications, once approved, do get built rather than shelved.
What This Means If You Live Here
For residents along Greenway Parkway, the practical takeaway isn't picking a side in the zoning fight. It's understanding that the timeline is longer than a single news cycle and that public input keeps mattering at every stage that's left. The Kierland Community Alliance has said it will notify residents as soon as a Paradise Valley Village Planning Committee hearing date is set, and that's the moment worth watching for, since it starts the countdown on the two remaining votes after it.
If you've been meaning to read the revised application yourself rather than rely on secondhand summaries, the project's own site lays out the current unit counts, building heights, and subarea plans in more detail than any single news story has room for. Whichever direction this goes, the Mesquite course will look different from how it looks today. The only real question left is how different, and that's still being decided one public meeting at a time.
Questions about how development activity like this tends to affect home values or resale timing in specific North Scottsdale communities? Jaime Fernandez has spent years tracking exactly these kinds of shifts across the Scottsdale and North Phoenix corridor and is happy to talk through what it might mean for your street specifically.
