For most of the last two years, the corner of Cactus Road and Tatum Boulevard has been something residents drive past rather than drive to. The fence line moves every few months. A rendering goes up on a construction wall, then comes down once the real building looks close enough. If you live anywhere near that stretch of north Phoenix, on either side of the Paradise Valley line, you've probably stopped reading the press releases about what's "coming soon" to PV, the redevelopment of the old Paradise Valley Mall site, because so many of those dates have already moved once.
This week, one of them didn't. Harry & Izzy's, the Indianapolis steakhouse making its first stop outside its home state, opens its doors on Wednesday, August 26. That single date is worth pausing on, because it's the moment PV stops being a construction update and starts being a place you can actually plan a Wednesday around.
From Mall Lot to Job Site to Habit
Paradise Valley Mall opened in 1978, closed in 2021, and came down not long after. What's replacing it is a $2 billion, 100-acre project from RED Development that mixes restaurants, retail, offices, and residential units around a central park. As of this spring, the site was roughly half built out, with the developer telling Axios Phoenix the remaining phases would likely wrap by 2030. RED's Jeff Moloznik put it plainly to Axios: "By this time next year, this will be a dramatically different place."
That's the long view. The short view, the one that actually matters if you live nearby, is which storefronts are staffed and which ones are still drywall.
| Business | Type | Status as of late August 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Blanco Reserva Cocina + Cantina | Restaurant | Open |
| Flower Child | Fast-casual | Open |
| Wren House Brewing | Brewery | Open |
| The Melt | Fast-casual | Open |
| Velvet Taco | Fast-casual | Open since March 2026 |
| Federal Pizza | Restaurant | Open since August 12, 2026 |
| Life Time Paradise Valley | Athletic club | Open since April 30, 2026 |
| Harry & Izzy's | Steakhouse | Opens August 26, 2026 |
| Cala | Restaurant | Under construction |
| The Vig | Restaurant | Now targeting fall 2026 |
| Too Sweet Cakes | Bakery | Past its original Q2 2026 target, no new date announced |
| OBON | Restaurant | 2027 |
| Culinary Gangster | Restaurant | 2027 |
Whole Foods Market relocated its longtime Shea and Tatum store into PV back in October 2024, and the 400-unit AVE Paradise Valley apartment community has been leasing since that same fall, according to Phoenix New Times. Those two anchors are easy to forget about now because they've simply become normal, which is its own kind of proof that the newer openings will eventually stop feeling like news too.
The One Opening This Week
Harry & Izzy's is the biggest single arrival left on the 2026 calendar, and it's worth knowing exactly what you're getting. The restaurant is a freestanding, newly built space of about 8,300 square feet facing the park at PV, with a 2,400 square foot patio and outdoor bar and room for roughly 340 guests, per reporting from Mouth by Southwest, which confirmed the August 26 date. It's the first location Huse Culinary has opened outside the Indianapolis area, and the menu leans on the group's pedigree: Harry & Izzy's was founded by two former operators of St. Elmo Steak House, an Indianapolis institution dating to 1902, and it shares that restaurant's well-known shrimp cocktail along with steaks, seafood, pastas, and a full bar program.
If a proper steakhouse night has been on your list, this is the date to put on the calendar rather than the vague "2026" that's been attached to it for the better part of a year.
What's Still Behind the Fence
Not everything is moving at Harry & Izzy's pace. Cala, the coastal European concept from Clive Collective that first opened inside Senna House Hotel in Scottsdale, is building a second, 6,500 square foot location just west of Blanco Reserva, but as of this summer it was still under construction with no firm opening week. The Vig, the Arcadia-born tavern chain opening its eighth Valley location here, has slipped from an earlier-in-the-year target to what's now described as a fall arrival, with chef Jeremy Pacheco running a menu built around a design that nods to the mall's original 1970s post-and-beam architecture. Too Sweet Cakes, the Gilbert bakery known for its three-day cronuts, was originally supposed to open its walk-up coffee window by the second quarter of 2026. That window has closed without a new date attached.
Further out, OBON and Culinary Gangster are both slated for 2027, alongside smaller lifestyle tenants like Helios Pilates, Escapology, and a nail and beauty cluster that includes WeWhiten and Ander Market.
There's a pattern in which announcements hold and which ones slip, and it isn't random. Fender Musical Instruments broke ground on its new co-headquarters at PV in September 2024 and opened on schedule in fall 2025, according to reporting from ABC15. Corporate headquarters move on construction and financing timelines that get locked in early. Restaurant build-outs move on kitchen equipment lead times, health inspections, and hiring a full staff before day one, which is a schedule with more places to slip. If you're deciding whether to trust the next "opening 2026" sign you see, that's the difference worth remembering.
The South End of the Same Corridor
PV isn't the only thing reshaping how this stretch of north Phoenix and Paradise Valley functions on a weeknight. About a mile south, at Scottsdale Road and Shea, the property longtime residents still call the old Scottsdale Plaza Resort reopened in January 2026 as Kimpton Miralina Resort & Villas after a $42 million renovation, bringing 224 redesigned guestrooms and 36 casitas online as the first phase of a planned 404 total accommodations. A second phase, a further $70 million transformation running from the fourth quarter of 2026 into early 2027, will add Katsuya, which will be the brand's first Arizona location, alongside the resort's existing restaurant, Hecho Libre.
Put those two projects next to each other and the picture changes. PV is building a walkable dining and retail node around a park near Cactus and Tatum. Kimpton Miralina is building a second, chef-driven dining anchor near Camelback. Neither project depends on the other, but residents who live along that corridor now have two ends of it filling in with restaurants at roughly the same time, which is a different situation than either project alone would create.
What This Means for a Wednesday
None of this requires a decision from anyone. It requires an update to a mental map that, for a lot of nearby homeowners, has been stuck on "eventually" for two years. The realistic version of a weeknight in this corridor right now looks like an early class or lap swim at Life Time before the heat sets in, a walk across the park, and dinner at Federal Pizza, Flower Child, or Blanco Reserva. Starting August 26, that list gets a steakhouse. Cala and The Vig will likely join it before the year is out. OBON and Culinary Gangster are still a year away, and the project as a whole won't be finished until closer to 2030.
That's the honest state of things. Some of it is open. Some of it is still fenced. And for the first time since the mall came down, the open part is big enough to build a routine around.
If you're weighing what a corridor like this means for property values or timing a move nearby, that's a longer conversation, and one I have often with clients watching this exact stretch of north Phoenix and Paradise Valley. Jessica Lonn has spent more than two decades helping Arizona buyers and sellers read changes like this one correctly. Let's Connect.
