If you walked the Camelback Walk path from Vía de Ventura down to McCormick Parkway this spring, you passed three construction stories at once. Not scattered. Strung along the water like beads on a wire.
That is the story worth telling about McCormick Ranch in 2026. The interior path network the community was master-planned around in 1972 is quietly being re-anchored, in a single calendar year, by three name-brand food and hospitality projects sitting within a two-mile stretch of the same corridor.
The thesis, plainly
McCormick Ranch was designed with recreation and drainage as the load-bearing idea. The lake system and greenbelt (Camelback Walk) was designed as a water drainage system, and in conjunction with the Indian Bend Wash, it is equipped to handle a 100-year flood. The dining and retail followed the roads, not the path.
In 2026 that inverts. The three projects opening or breaking ground this year all front the water or the path, and they are close enough together that a resident can reach every one on foot or by bike without touching Scottsdale Road or Hayden.
Here is the corridor, north to south.
1. Vía de Ventura: Starfish Scottsdale (open)
The northern anchor came online in May. Starfish debuted on May 5, 2026, at 8390 East Vía de Ventura, filling roughly 5,200 square feet with indoor seating and a sizable patio. Starfish Hospitality Group had not previously operated outside California; the Scottsdale opening marks the group's first restaurant outside California.
What that means for a resident who walks in from the greenbelt at Mountain View: a 1,400-square-foot patio, a menu that pulls from Thailand, Korea, Vietnam, China and Japan and features more than 70 shareable plates, including Lobster Macadamia Rolls, BBQ Pork Buns and Thai Curry Chicken, and hours running from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, with a daily happy hour from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m.
The 3 to 6 p.m. window matters more than it looks. It aligns with the shoulder between a late afternoon path loop and dinner, which is the exact hour most McCormick Ranch residents are actually outside.
2. 7501 E. McCormick Parkway: Lakefront at Scottsdale (breaking ground)
Move south along the path and you reach the project that is arguably the most structurally interesting of the three. It is not a new restaurant. It is an office park giving up.
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, focused on the water-facing site at 7501 E. McCormick Parkway, where the developer aims to swap out office space for restaurants and boutique retail along the shoreline. The project is expected to feature four restaurants and boutique retail, effectively converting the existing office site into a lakefront destination for shoppers and diners. Groundbreaking is currently targeted for June 2026.
Four restaurants in one place is a category shift for McCormick Ranch, where dining has historically been distributed one or two tenants at a time inside older commercial centers like Mountain View Plaza and Paseo Village. It also confirms something the community's post-pandemic office vacancy has been implying for a while: shoreline square footage is worth more as patio than as cubicle.
3. 7255 E. McCormick Parkway: the Mastro rebuild of the Chart House site (fall 2026)
The southern anchor is the emotional one. For anyone who has lived here more than a few years, Chart House on Camelback Lake was a fixed point.
"My brother Mike and I grew up just a few blocks away in McCormick Ranch, and this is the perfect place for us to do something very special that fits this iconic location." — Jeff Mastro, Prime Steak Concepts
Chart House, a high-end seafood and steak restaurant in Scottsdale's McCormick Ranch neighborhood, closed after 41 years in business; Houston-based Landry's sold the restaurant, located on Camelback Lake on the southeast corner of Scottsdale and McCormick Parkway, to Prime Steak Concepts, which plans to level the 10,000-square-foot building and introduce a new upscale steakhouse at the site.
The team behind Dominick's Steakhouse, Steak 44, and Ocean 44 announced the acquisition of the former Chart House property at 7255 E. McCormick Parkway in Scottsdale, with plans to launch a new fine dining concept at the lakeside location; Prime Steak Concepts, owned by James Beard-nominated brothers Jeff and Mike Mastro, their father Dennis Mastro, and business partner Scott Troilo, plans to completely redevelop the waterfront space near Camelback Lake.
Timing is the one thing worth watching carefully here. Some coverage, including representatives of the Prime Steak brand saying the new concept is scheduled to open fall 2026, points to a 2026 open. Other reporting is more conservative: the concept, which hasn't been finalized, isn't expected to open until 2027. Demolition of the original building has been the first visible step. Residents driving past should plan for a hole in the lake edge for most of the year regardless.
Why these three are actually one story
Look at a map. Vía de Ventura, McCormick Parkway east of Hayden, and the southeast corner of Scottsdale and McCormick Parkway are all inside the same interior loop of the community. Every one of them touches either a lake or a path spur off the main greenbelt.
That greenbelt is the underappreciated infrastructure in this conversation. According to the McCormick Ranch Property Owners' Association, it was Scottsdale's first upscale master-planned community, developed from a former 4,200-acre ranch and now home to roughly 27,000 residents, with association documents showing 1,771 residential acres, 542 commercial acres, 184 common-area acres, 120 lake acres, and 303 golf-course acres, along with more than 2,500 established trees in common areas. Neighborhood multi-use paths link directly to Scottsdale's Indian Bend Wash Greenbelt, an 11-mile linear park that runs through the center of the city.
The residential piece of that math is worth pausing on. 1,771 residential acres against 120 lake acres and 303 golf acres means the lake-and-fairway frontage is a small, fixed share of the community. When a shoreline office park converts to four restaurants, and a 10,000-square-foot lakeside building comes down for a ground-up steakhouse by operators who grew up in the neighborhood, the frontage is not just changing hands. It is changing category.
What already reset the baseline
None of this is happening in a vacuum. The resort anchor was rebuilt first. Driftwood Capital announced the completion of its $40 million renovation for The Scottsdale Resort at McCormick Ranch, relaunched under the Curio Collection by Hilton brand, situated on 16 acres within the planned community of McCormick Ranch.
That was the signal. The 2026 openings are the follow-through. If you have lived here since the resort was still called the Scottsdale Conference Center, you are watching the second inflection point in the community's hospitality history, and it is the first one built around the paths rather than the parking lots.
A practical route for the next few months
For residents who want to actually see the changes rather than read about them, a single loop covers all three:
- Start at Mountain View Park, which functions as a practical northern access to the Greenbelt and local paths.
- Head south along the Camelback Walk toward Vía de Ventura and cut east to 8390 E. Vía de Ventura for a look at Starfish's patio.
- Drop south again along the path toward the McCormick Parkway lakes; the office site at 7501 E. McCormick Parkway is the Lakefront at Scottsdale footprint.
- Continue to the southeast corner of Scottsdale Road and McCormick Parkway to see demolition and staging at the former 7255 site.
- Close the loop back through McCormick-Stillman Railroad Park, which remains a go-to for seasonal events, model trains, a carousel, and picnic lawns, easy to reach from the Greenbelt.
That is roughly a morning. It is also, functionally, a tour of what the next two years of the neighborhood will feel like.
What it says about the community
McCormick Ranch is one of those neighborhoods that people move to and stay in. The behavior of long-tenured owners is the reason a name like Mastro chooses to rebuild here rather than in the Quarter or the Waterfront. Operators follow demand density, and demand density in this community is unusually loyal.
For the people already inside that loop, the practical takeaway is smaller than the headlines suggest. Your walk is not changing. The buildings at three specific coordinates on your walk are. Knowing which corner, which address, and which month keeps you a step ahead of the coverage that treats these as unrelated openings.
If you are curious about what the shift means for your own address on the water, the path, or a fairway, Valley Luxury Group tracks the corridor block by block and is glad to talk through what it does and does not change about your home's position in the market. Find out what your property is worth.
