Real estate firm Legacy Partners and joint venture partner DWS have started construction on Olea Scottsdale, a 433-unit apartment community in Scottsdale, Ariz. The development will be completed in multiple phases through 2027.
Olea Scottsdale will consist of 325 garden-style apartment units, along with 108 townhouses. Olea Scottsdale will include a total of 38 separate buildings, 24 of which will include townhouses and 14 with include apartments. The project will be at located at Legacy Boulevard and Miller Road, north of Loop 101 and east of Scottsdale Road, in the North Scottsdale submarket.
The apartment buildings border those streets with a 25-foot setback, creating a buffer that allows for desert plants to line the roadways. The townhouses, along Miller Road, are set back even further —more than 75 feet— allowing room for outdoor amenity areas including a dog park. The property has views of the nearby McDowell Mountains.
KTGY is the architect for the project. An affiliate of The Dinerstein Cos., a Houston-based real estate company, is the general contractor and a co-investor in Olea Scottsdale.
Foster City, Calif.-based Legacy manages 50 communities and more than 12,000 units across six states. Recently Legacy and DWS started work on Soto, a 200-unit apartment community in Torrance, Calif. It too will be completed in 2027.
Deals getting done again
Legacy CEO Robert Calleja recently told Multi-Housing News that while the rapid rise in interest rates beginning in late 2022 cast a pall over the real estate investment and development, the stability and reduction in rates during 2024 allowed deals to get done again.
In greater Phoenix in the first quarter of 2025, apartment vacancy rates were trending up, while rental rates and construction deliveries were dropping, according to Kidder Mathews. Marketwide vacancy stood at 11.2 percent in Q1 2025, up from 9.7 percent a year earlier. Some 19,958 units were underway that quarter, down from a surge total of 32,539 units during Q1 2024.
The North Scottsdale submarket, however, is still among the fastest-growing multifamily submarkets in greater Phoenix, still commanding rent growth, according to Legacy. Olea Scottsdale’s placement puts the property near two of Arizona’s largest employment concentrations; these are the Scottsdale Airpark, and Kierland Corridor, an open-air retail center.