For years, a casual Tuesday dinner in Paradise Valley meant driving south into Old Town or east into Arcadia. That default is quietly breaking. The 100-acre site at Cactus Road and Tatum Boulevard, once the Paradise Valley Mall, is now a walkable district of restaurants, a three-acre park, apartments, and an incoming athletic club, and it has become the closest thing this side of the McDowells has to a neighborhood living room.
What Actually Changed at Cactus and Tatum
The redevelopment is branded simply as PV. RED Development is behind it, the total investment is north of $2 billion, and the site spans more than 100 acres near Cactus and Tatum with dining, retail, office, and residential all arranged around a centrally located park and gathering space. The first phase of retail leased out to 100 percent occupancy, and the first tenants began opening in fall 2024. What matters for residents of Paradise Valley proper, the foothills of Mummy and Camelback, and the pockets of north Phoenix that fed the old mall is simpler: the crossroads that used to mean a Sears service bay and a fading food court is now a place people walk to on purpose.
The clearest signal that PV is a district and not a shopping center is Trevor's Liquor. The 14,000-square-foot venue took over the former Sears Auto Center on Tatum, and beyond a boutique bottle shop it now houses a full-service bar, a pizzeria, a golf simulator, a cigar lounge, and a dog-friendly patio. Locals treat it as a bar with parking, not a store with a bar in it, and that reframing tells you most of what you need to know about the project's ambitions.
Where to Go Right Now
The first-phase roster is fully open, and it leans heavier on Fox Restaurant Concepts and homegrown Phoenix operators than the marketing suggests.
| Place | What it is | Why it's worth the drive from Lincoln or Tatum |
|---|---|---|
| Blanco Reserva Cocina + Cantina | An upscaled Blanco concept from Sam Fox, the first of its kind anywhere | Raw bar with oysters and ahi tuna tacos, sangria-braised short rib, and a bar that overlooks the three-acre park |
| Flower Child | Fast-casual healthy bowls from the same Fox stable | Reliable weeknight lunch or takeaway without the Kierland traffic |
| Trevor's Liquor | 14,000 sq ft in the old Sears Auto Center | Golf sim, cigar lounge, pizza kitchen, boutique bottle selection under one roof |
| The Melt | California-founded burgers and grilled cheese, first Arizona location | The kids' meal that finally beats the drive-through |
| Wren House Brewing Co. | Local Phoenix brewery expanding east | Taproom hours built around after-work walk-ups |
| Whole Foods Market | Relocated from Tatum and Shea | Larger footprint, same trip |
| Velvet Taco | Dallas-born globally inspired tacos, opened at PV in March 2026 | Twenty-plus tacos including chicken tikka masala and Korean-style fried rice |
| Sephora, European Wax Center, Hammer & Nails, SkinSpirit | Personal care anchors | Reason enough to combine errands with dinner |
A short list of practical notes. Blanco Reserva sits at 12820 N. Tatum Boulevard and looks directly onto the park, which makes the patio worth requesting. Trevor's sits at the corner nearest Paradise Village Parkway. Velvet Taco tucked into a 1,973-square-foot corner next to European Wax Center at 12646 N. Tatum, unit 105. Too Sweet Cakes popped up in the park during a recent walk-through with coffee and pastries before its permanent bakery is finished, so keep an eye on weekend park programming for cameos.
A Weekday Reshaped
Consider what a Wednesday now looks like for someone who lives off Lincoln Drive or up on Tatum near Shea. Coffee and a pastry from a Too Sweet pop-up in the park. A walk with the dog along the linked open areas the developer built between buildings. A stop at Whole Foods that used to be at Tatum and Shea and is now folded into the same trip. A drink at Trevor's on the dog-friendly patio while a golf group finishes a simulator round nearby. Dinner at Blanco Reserva with the park view, or a fast burger at The Melt if the evening is short. None of that requires the drive to Scottsdale Road.
That is the shift worth naming. The old mall pulled residents inside a building. The new PV pushes them into an outdoor grid built around a park, and it changes the calculus of where a Paradise Valley household spends its ordinary evenings.
What Lands Through the Rest of 2026
The second wave of tenants is where PV starts to differentiate itself from any other Valley redevelopment. Construction is underway on several standout openings.
- Cala, the coastal European restaurant from Phoenix-based Clive Collective and Food Network chef Beau MacMillan, is expanding for the first time out of its Senna House Hotel original in Scottsdale. The PV location is 6,500 square feet, sits west of Blanco Reserva at 4596 E. Cactus Road, unit 105, and is scheduled for 2026.
- Harry & Izzy's, the sister concept to Indianapolis institution St. Elmo Steak House, is making its first move outside the Midwest with a standalone 8,300-square-foot building at the northeast corner of the park block, slated for summer 2026. Craig Huse of Huse Culinary has framed the Phoenix market as a long-term expansion target.
- The Vig will open its eighth Valley location at PV in 2026 in a design led by AV3's Artie A. Vigil III, with a menu overseen by chef Jeremy Pacheco. The building leans into 1970s-era post-and-beam architecture and adobe brick sourced from one of the state's last remaining adobe suppliers, a small piece of Arizona-specific detailing.
- Too Sweet Cakes will graduate from Gilbert and Phoenix pop-up status to its first true brick-and-mortar location, 1,700 square feet just north of Cala, with a walk-up coffee window and a viewing bar for cake decorating.
- Federal Pizza is opening its second location ever, more than a decade after the original, courtesy of Upward Projects, the Phoenix-based group behind Postino.
- Hawaiian Bros Island Grill, Frost Gelato Shoppe, and Distinctive Salon & Spa rounded out the spring 2025 wave of upcoming openings.
The developer, RED Development, has publicly said it is still working on a seafood-focused restaurant and a breakfast operator to fill out the roster. If you have wondered why the parking pattern already reads busier on Saturdays than the old mall's did in its last decade, the answer is that PV is not finished, and every quarter through 2027 adds a reason to walk over.
The Piece Most Residents Miss
PV's dining lineup gets the press. The residential and office side is what changes property values, traffic patterns, and long-term demand at the intersection.
AVE Paradise Valley already delivered 400 luxury apartment residences on the site. A second luxury apartment community of 335 units by Transwestern Development Company is under construction with a resort-style pool, fitness facility, and rooftop lounge. Fender Musical Instruments Corporation topped off its 77,000-square-foot co-headquarters on the site, and the office building is set to open in late 2025, bringing daytime workers to a corner that had none for the last several years.
The wellness anchor is the one to watch. Life Time Paradise Valley, a 92,000-square-foot athletic country club, is scheduled to open in the first half of 2026 and will be the ninth Life Time athletic country club in Arizona. Adjacent to it, Life Time Living Paradise Valley broke ground in October 2025 as an 11-story, 327-unit luxury-for-lease residential tower with a completion target of 2027. It is a first-to-market concept that integrates apartment living with the athletic club next door, and residents will have walkable access to Whole Foods, Blanco, Flower Child, Federal Pizza, and Cala. That mix, an athletic country club, wellness-programmed residences, a park, and a curated food hall stretched across an outdoor grid, is the actual product PV is selling. Restaurants are the visible layer.
What This Means for the Neighborhood
For anyone who has owned a home in Paradise Valley or the surrounding foothills for a decade or more, the Cactus and Tatum corner has been a question mark. That question is answered. The area is no longer an errand corner but a destination one, and the emerging pattern of how residents move through it, on foot, with dogs, in and out of the park, across a couple of hours instead of a single stop, is beginning to feel much closer to Old Town than to the mall that stood there before.
If you would like to talk through what this shift means for a property you already own nearby, or for a home you are considering in Paradise Valley, north Phoenix, or the foothill communities that border the site, the team at Craig Bennett Group is glad to walk it through with you.
