The real facts (we checked) about Scottsdale's apartment building
Scottsdale council candidates are tired of seeing new apartment developments, which they view as the root of the city's problems.
Many have claimed that multi-family housing creates too much traffic, obstructs residents' views and destroys the city's character. They've also said it threatens to worsen Scottsdale's shrinking supply of the drought-stricken Colorado River.
“What we don’t have is enough water to build another 10,000 apartments on top of the apartments that have already been approved,” former Councilmember Bob Littlefield opined ahead of the summer primary election.
Apartments and condos, however, use far less water than single-family homes, Scottsdale water officials recently explained to city leaders.
To those like incumbent Councilmember Barry Graham, who’s seeking reelection, that reality is “propaganda” and a “myth” perpetuated by developers and his chief opponent in the race, Raoul Zubia.
“Residents deserve to know the facts about our water, not political rhetoric based on ideological hearsay,” Graham claimed in a newsletter to supporters this week.
Throughout the election, Littlefield, Graham and former Republican state lawmaker Michelle Ugenti-Rita ran on a joint conservative platform against overdevelopment, framing the race as a battle for Scottsdale’s character.
While Littlefield is no longer in the Nov. 3 runoff race for the last two council seats, Graham and Ugenti-Rita have continued their campaign against apartment developers who they believe are taking water from the city.
They’re competing against Zubia, a self-described political moderate who’s campaigned on limiting growth while advocating for the city’s advanced water purification project.
Here’s how Scottsdale’s portfolio of multi-family housing has grown and continues to expand, and whether it has had any impacts on traffic and water:
How many apartment developments has Scottsdale built?
Since 2013, more than 13,000 apartments and condos have been built in Scottsdale, according to the city's planning department.
That's an annual average of about 944 units.
Nearly 7,000 more units are in the city’s multi-family housing pipeline, meaning they're either proposed, greenlit for development, or under construction.
Of the 48 projects listed, the largest is a 1,330-unit development that Optima Realty is building near Loop 101 and Scottsdale Road.
Absent from the list is Axon’s controversial project, which remains tied up in litigation by Littlefield and his political action committee, Taxpayers Against Awful Apartment Zoning Exemptions.
The Taser-maker plans to build a massive corporate campus in north Scottsdale, which will include a new headquarters, a hotel, commercial space and an even mix of 1,200 apartments and condos.
Those residential plans have stirred considerable consternation around the city over the years. It also drew the ire of Graham and Ugenti-Rita, as well as Littlefield, who have held the project up as the "poster child" of overdevelopment.
They've also claimed that Axon is spending “millions” to install “rubber-stamp loyalists” who want Scottsdale to become a liberal city like Seattle or Los Angeles.
Better Together, a political action committee with close business and financial ties to the company, spent $335,000 to defeat the anti-development slate of candidates during the July 21 primary election.
Campaign finance reports filed after the election showed that three of the eight council candidates received contributions from Axon officials.
Incumbent Councilmember Solange Whitehead, the top vote-getter who won the first open seat outright, received a $5,000 donation from Axon’s chief customer officer in March. Over the years, she’s voted to approve the company’s headquarters project.
Zubia and former council hopeful Crystal Carroll each received a $5,000 donation from Axon President Josh Isner on July 1.
Scottsdale says single-family homes use more water than apartments, condos
The upcoming runoff race comes as Arizona braces for cuts to the Colorado River, which supplies 70% of Scottsdale’s drinking water.
Whether the city is “giving away” its water to apartment developers — as Graham and his allies have claimed — has been a key debate in the ongoing council race.
Based on Scottsdale Water’s findings, single-family homes make up the largest share of potable water users.
Scottsdale delivered 24 billion gallons of drinking water to its customers in 2025. Multi-family communities used a fifth, or 20%, of that water, while single-family residences used 61%, according to a Sept. 22 presentation to the City Council.
The city’s development policies and guidelines, which were drafted in 2018, echoed those figures.
On average, a condominium in a high-density community uses about 185 gallons of water a day, according to the manual. A single-family home in a typical neighborhood, which fits between three to eight homes per acre, uses 248 gallons of water daily.
Graham makes ‘apples-to-apples’ comparison
In recent weeks, Graham has framed the debate as a “supply and demand” issue to dispute or “dispel” his opponents’ observations that homes use more water than apartments.
“I have listened to high-density apartment developers repeatedly try to convince residents that apartments have less impact on our water security than residential homes,” he stated. “That is hyperbolic hearsay.”
To make his argument, Graham pointed to the 2018 development guidelines.
On a per-unit basis, he acknowledged that an apartment uses less water than a house. However, an “apples-to-apples” comparison, he noted, should be based on land use.
A 20-acre community with about 100 single-family homes would use 24,820 gallons of water a day, or roughly 9 million gallons annually, Graham said.
However, if that same 20-acre land had a massive apartment complex with 1,000 units, it would require 185,300 gallons daily, or nearly 68 million gallons a year. That’s more than seven times as much water as a subdivision of single-family homes, Graham said.
“Compared to residential homes, large-scale apartments put more demand on our water, make traffic worse and diminish residents’ quality of life,” he claimed.
Do any Scottsdale apartment projects compare?
A review of the 48 projects listed in Scottsdale’s multi-family developments shows that only one comes close to the scenario Graham described: Optima Realty’s $1 billion mixed-use community.
The Optima McDowell Mountain Village will have 1,330 apartments and condominiums on a 22-acre site. When complete, it’ll comprise six glass-enclosed and concrete-framed buildings and an underground parking garage.
Axon’s similarly planned $1 billion project will fit on nearly 45 acres of land near Loop 101 and Hayden Road.
Only three other listed projects are being built on 18- to 23-acre sites. The largest, the Artesia Condos near central Scottsdale, has 546 units.
The most densely populated project is the Hazel & Azure, a large mixed-use development with 532 luxury apartments in Old Town Scottsdale. On a nearly 4-acre site across from Scottsdale Fashion Square mall, the apartments will be built as an eight-story midrise building and a 12-story tower.
Do apartments create more traffic?
The belief that apartments will place more cars on the road, and therefore generate additional traffic, is a common refrain zoning attorney Adam Baugh often hears when his clients propose new developments.
While he acknowledged that any new development will create more vehicle trips, the biggest concern is whether those additional trips create problems during peak hours and whether the surrounding roads are designed to handle the traffic.
That's determined on a case-by-case basis, usually through a project's traffic study, Baugh, a partner at the Phoenix-based firm Withey Morris and Baugh, noted.
Generally, he found that residents in subdivisions drive to work early in the morning, while those in multi-family communities spread out their trips throughout the day.
"It’s usually a different schedule and a different pattern," he said.
Baugh also noted that complexes built along arterial roads, which are meant to handle a high volume of drivers, will increase traffic. However, he added, it'll likely be negligible.
"The traffic it creates," he said of apartments, "is so small compared to the amount (the road) is designed to carry."
-----------
Like this story? Get more East Valley news straight into your email inbox by signing up for our free weekly East Valley Newsletter, which comes out Wednesdays.
Shawn Raymundo covers Scottsdale and Maricopa County. Reach him at sraymundo@gannett.com or follow him on X @ShawnzyTsunami.
