If you walk the greenbelt north from Mountain View Park, you have probably noticed the fencing along McCormick Parkway, the fresh paint on the Vía de Ventura frontage, and the small cluster of construction trailers where the old Chart House used to sit. For a community built around lakes and paths, McCormick Ranch has historically had a quiet water's edge. That is the story that is finally changing this year.
The gap that has always existed here
McCormick Ranch has had the rooftops, the two championship courses, and the lakes for more than fifty years. What it has not had, in any real quantity, is upscale restaurant space actually touching the water. The neighborhood has had the rooftops, the golf, the lakes, and the money for years, yet true upscale waterfront restaurant space has stayed thin. That gap is exactly what this redevelopment aims to hit.
The thesis of this post is simple. Three separate projects, each with a specific address and a specific date, are converting the Camelback Lake and McCormick Lake frontage from an office-park backdrop into a walkable dining district. If you live here, you are about to have three to five new patios within a mile of your front door that did not exist on your last morning loop.
Here is the shape of it:
- Starfish Scottsdale — 8390 E. Vía de Ventura. Open now.
- Lakefront at Scottsdale — 7501 E. McCormick Parkway. Groundbreaking targeted for June 2026.
- Prime Steak Concepts at the former Chart House site — target opening June 2027.
- The Scottsdale Resort & Spa (formerly The Scottsdale Resort at McCormick Ranch) — reopened after a full pool, lobby, and restaurant renovation.
None of these are speculative. Each has a permit trail, a named operator, and a public date.
What Starfish tells you about the tenant mix that is coming
The first data point is already serving dinner. A California-based Asian coastal cuisine concept made its Arizona debut with Starfish Scottsdale, which began accepting limited reservations in late April 2026 before fully opening on May 5. The restaurant at McCormick Ranch, 8390 E. Vía de Ventura, is the first Starfish venture outside southern California.
Two details are worth pausing on. First, the footprint. The new restaurant covers 5,200 square feet, including a 1,400-square-foot patio, and operates 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sundays through Thursdays and 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays. That is a full lunch-through-late-dinner service model, not a soft-launch dinner-only concept. Second, the origin story. The husband-and-wife team of Archie and Gretchen McConnell launched the Starfish concept in Laguna Beach in 2011, and Gretchen McConnell has said many of their guests split their time between Orange County and the Valley, which made the expansion feel natural.
Read that closely. Operators are now underwriting McCormick Ranch as a bi-coastal second-home market rather than a strictly local one. That is a different tenant thesis than the strip-center Italian and pub concepts that have anchored the community for two decades.
The office-to-restaurant swap on McCormick Parkway
The bigger structural change sits half a mile south, at the water. Scottsdale-based Diversified Partners is transforming an aging office property in McCormick Ranch into a compact lakefront shopping and dining hub called Lakefront at Scottsdale, on the water-facing site at 7501 E. McCormick Parkway, swapping out office space for restaurants and boutique retail along the shoreline.
The scale of the food program is what makes this a district rather than a one-off. Four waterfront dining spaces are planned right on the lake, with footprints ranging from roughly 5,400 to 10,400 square feet. Three of them add large patios, sized around 3,000 to 4,000 square feet, which should put the water front and center for guests. Groundbreaking is currently targeted for June 2026.
For a walker, translate those square footages. A 10,400-square-foot restaurant with a 4,000-square-foot patio is roughly the scale of a full destination steakhouse. Four of them, in a row, on a shoreline that has been closed to the public behind an office lobby since the Nixon administration.
The bones stay useful. The shoreline gets the bigger story.
That is a line from the developer's positioning on the project, and it captures the operational reality. The office slab is not being demolished wholesale. The water-facing use is being unlocked.
The Chart House ghost, and why it is not a ghost anymore
Anyone who has lived here longer than a decade remembers the Chart House. Its site has sat as one of the ranch's more visible vacancies. The same corridor already has another lakefront dining project taking shape nearby, where the former Chart House site is being rebuilt by Prime Steak Concepts into a 12,000 to 14,000 square foot steakhouse with a June 2027 target. Put that next to Lakefront at Scottsdale, and you can see a real dining district forming around this part of McCormick Ranch.
Stack the two projects. Four restaurants at Lakefront plus one 12,000-plus-square-foot steakhouse next door equals five new lake-adjacent operators within roughly a quarter-mile stretch. That is the density threshold at which a corridor stops being a set of destinations and starts being a place to walk between destinations.
The resort quietly reset itself too
While all of that has been in the news, the property that shares the greenbelt with most of these projects finished its own reset. The Scottsdale Resort at McCormick Ranch is now operating as The Scottsdale Resort & Spa, Curio Collection by Hilton. The renovation added notable upgrades to the entry drive landscaping and event lawn, courtyard and guest amenities, a new lobby bar, a new restaurant featuring a display kitchen, and renovations of the guestrooms, with a complete removal of the entire existing pool and pool patio, replaced with a new pool, a new outdoor pool bar with bar-height seating, bistro lighting, and a dynamically lit pool trellis.
The recognition followed. The Scottsdale Resort & Spa was named a 2026 U.S. News & World Report Best Hotel winner, with rankings that included #14 Best Phoenix Hotels and #12 Best Phoenix Resorts.
Across the water, the other lakeside anchor is still doing its own thing. The McCormick Scottsdale sits on 480 acres within the McCormick Ranch Golf Club and remains the only lakeside resort in Scottsdale, on the shores of Camelback Lake with the mountain in view. The resort overlooks 44-acre Camelback Lake. Piñon Grill and Coyote Cabana Bar continue to draw the sunset-kayak-and-dinner crowd that has been the ranch's baseline lake experience for years.
Summer routines that predate all of it
None of this replaces the reason people already live here. It layers on top. If you have small kids, you already know the summer calendar at the Railroad Park. Two dates on it this year are worth flagging on the fridge.
Slide the Rails, the Railroad Park's summer water event, runs Saturday, August 1 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. for a morning of water-filled fun for the whole family. A $10 wristband includes unlimited access to all water attractions as well as train and carousel rides throughout the event, and children two and under are free. Wristbands go on sale July 27, pickup only at Stillman-Station.
The park's Saturday-night music series continues as well. Recently named one of Arizona's best live music venues by Best of American Towns, Saturday nights at the Railroad Park run from country and Top 40 to R&B and Americana soul, with picnic space, food from Boxcar Bites and Hartley's General Store or the on-site food trucks, and train and carousel rides running until 8:30 p.m. for $3.
The dining anchors that were already yours
The new pipeline sits alongside the operators who have quietly held the neighborhood down. Grassroots Kitchen & Tap, Saint Urban, Crust Simply Italian, Collins Brothers Public House, El Carbón Mexican Eatery, Di Maggio's, Lure Fish House, and Jing all appear on current best-of lists for restaurants near McCormick Ranch as of June 2026. The VIG remains the strip-center standard-bearer, a mid-century-meets-rustic room that the operator itself describes as a salute to the classic Scottsdale neighborhood where the roofs are all red.
That existing base matters for one specific reason. When Lakefront at Scottsdale breaks ground this summer, the restaurant vacancies will not be filled by concepts that already exist in the ranch's inline centers. The mix will diversify rather than cannibalize. Residents get more choice, not the same choice with a different address.
What to actually do this month
If you have been running the same 3.5-mile loop past the ducks for a decade, this is the summer to change your route. Cut east from the greenbelt at McCormick Parkway. Walk past the Lakefront site and note what has been demolished. Continue past the old Chart House pad. Cross Vía de Ventura and end at Starfish's patio. That single loop touches every project in this post and takes about forty-five minutes at a Scottsdale-August pace, which is to say early morning only.
For McCormick Ranch owners weighing whether to hold, rent, or sell into the next cycle, the operational data from these openings will matter. Patio counts, average check sizes, and evening foot traffic on the greenbelt are the inputs that separate a good listing photo from a defensible price. If you would like a read on how the lake-edge redevelopment could affect your specific property, or how a well-positioned home nearby is performing as a short-term rental this season, Neighbors Luxury is happy to prepare a Free Vacation Rental Property Analysis and pair it with a current sales-side valuation.
