For a community built around water, McCormick Ranch has spent a strange couple of decades treating its lakes as scenery. You could walk the path around McCormick Lake at dusk and count more fishing rods than dinner reservations. The shoreline held offices, a bank drive-through, and one aging seafood house. If you wanted a table on the water, you drove.
That reality is what is quietly shifting this year. Three separate projects, all within a short walk or bike ride of each other, are turning a single stretch of the lake into something the neighborhood has never actually had: a walkable waterfront dining row. If you already live here, the change is worth understanding now, because it will alter which loops feel most pleasant in the evening and which restaurants your out-of-town guests ask about next winter.
The gap that is finally closing
The community has had the rooftops, the golf, and the lakes for a long time. What it has not had, per commercial brokers watching the corridor, is upscale waterfront restaurant space in any real quantity. Coverage of the redevelopment at 7501 E. McCormick Parkway makes the point directly: the money and the residents have been here for years, yet true lakefront dining stayed thin, and that gap is exactly what the current wave of projects is aimed at.
Three things are happening at once inside a very small radius:
- Starfish Scottsdale opened on May 5, 2026, bringing coastal Asian cuisine into a space that had never held a destination restaurant.
- Lakefront at Scottsdale, a mixed-use waterfront redevelopment at the former Forever Corporate Plaza, is targeted to break ground in June 2026 with four restaurants on the water.
- The former Chart House site, empty since the longtime Scottsdale staple closed, is being rebuilt by Prime Steak Concepts into a new steakhouse targeted for a Fall 2026 opening.
Each of these on its own would be worth knowing about. Together they explain why the McCormick Parkway lake edge will not look like the same neighborhood by the time the paloverdes bloom again.
Starfish Scottsdale, already serving
Starfish Hospitality Group is a Southern California operator with restaurants in Laguna Beach and Newport Beach, plus a coastal catering arm and a concessions concept at the Sawdust Art Festival. Scottsdale is the group's first location outside California, founded by husband-and-wife team Gretchen and Archie McConnell in 2011, as reported by Fabulous Arizona.
A few numbers make the fit obvious. The Scottsdale build sits at roughly 5,200 square feet total, with about 3,800 square feet indoors and a 1,400 square foot patio. Signature dishes lean into the group's coastal Asian identity: Thai spicy beef with basil, a lobster macadamia sushi roll, Chilean sea bass wrapped in banana leaf with Thai green curry. The bar leans on lychee, sake, Asian beers, and a wine list picked for range rather than a single region.
The opening date matters as much as the menu. Starfish began service on May 5, 2026, per Mouth by Southwest. That timing put a full-service, patio-forward restaurant on the shoreline months before construction fencing appeared anywhere else. If you have wondered why the Hayden corridor traffic pattern at 6:30 p.m. has felt different this summer, Starfish is a large part of the reason.
What breaks ground in June at 7501 E. McCormick Parkway
The single biggest change is the redevelopment of the former Forever Corporate Plaza, an aging office property directly on the water at 7501 E. McCormick Parkway. Scottsdale-based Diversified Partners is converting the site into a mixed-use project called Lakefront at Scottsdale, with a groundbreaking targeted for June 2026, according to Hoodline's coverage of the Phoenix Business Journal report.
The dining plan is the headline. Four waterfront restaurants are planned, with footprints running from roughly 5,400 to 10,400 square feet. Three of them include large patios, sized between 3,000 and 4,000 square feet, oriented to put the water in front of guests rather than behind a parking field.
The retail merchandising reads like a shopping list written specifically for the neighborhood that surrounds it. Suites are penciled at 1,200 to 5,500 square feet, and the tenant mix that has been described so far leans into jewelry, a high-end salon, medical spa uses, wellness studios, yoga, and pilates. That is a deliberate move. It keeps the shoreline active through the morning and afternoon rather than only at dinner, which is how a strip becomes a destination instead of a night out.
The existing office building is not being torn down. The roughly 100,000 square feet of office space stays in play, with suites from 940 to 14,000 square feet, and Diversified Partners plans to move its own Scottsdale headquarters onto the site. A separate bank teller building near the property is folded into the redevelopment footprint, which is what gives the project enough lake frontage to justify four restaurants in the first place.
For a resident, the practical version of all this is simpler. The building that looked like a tired office park on your walk south from Mountain View Park is scheduled to spend the next couple of years turning into something you can actually walk to for dinner.
The Chart House site, rebuilt by hometown operators
The third piece of the picture is the former Chart House parcel. Chart House had operated on that spot since 1984 and has permanently closed. Prime Steak Concepts, run by Jeff and Mike Mastro, has taken the site and is rebuilding it into a fine dining concept between roughly 12,000 and 14,000 square feet, with a Fall 2026 target.
The Mastro name carries weight here for a reason that is easy to miss from a distance. In comments to What Now Phoenix, Jeff Mastro noted that he and his brother grew up just a few blocks from the site, in McCormick Ranch itself. That is not a marketing detail. It changes the calculus for how the building will read against the neighborhood, and it explains the willingness to invest in ground-up construction on a parcel most operators would have leased and lightly refreshed.
Timing matters too. If Lakefront at Scottsdale breaks ground in June and the Mastro project opens in the fall, the corridor will spend a stretch of 2026 and 2027 with active construction on one side of the water and a new steakhouse on the other. Residents planning renovations or listing timelines in the immediate vicinity should factor that in.
What this does to your evening walk
The reason to care about all of this even if you never eat out is that McCormick Ranch's daily rhythm is built on the paths. The community connects into Scottsdale's Indian Bend Wash Greenbelt, described in the city's own materials as an 11-mile linear park, with local coverage often citing more than 25 miles of walking and biking paths across the wider system. Those paths were laid out on the assumption that the destinations along them would be parks, lakes, and the occasional café. The next 18 months rewrite that assumption.
A few practical implications worth thinking through if you live here:
- The Hayden and Via de Ventura corridor is no longer the only serious dining anchor. Places like The Vig McCormick Ranch and Amelia's by EAT have carried the neighborhood dining load for years. They are about to have real waterfront competition a short bike ride away.
- Sunset patio inventory is roughly tripling on the lake itself. Three of the four Lakefront at Scottsdale restaurants are penciled for patios in the 3,000 to 4,000 square foot range, on top of Starfish's 1,400 square foot patio already in service.
- Traffic and parking patterns near McCormick Parkway will shift. Path access from the north and west becomes a real advantage. Homes with a direct path connection to the lake edge, rather than a car-only route, gain a practical amenity they did not have a year ago.
- The mid-day retail plan changes who is on the shoreline. Wellness studios, a salon, and boutique retail keep the site populated in the morning, which changes the feel of the walk before any of the restaurants open for dinner.
None of this is a promise that every tenant will land on schedule. Restaurant projects slip. Groundbreakings target dates that construction lending sometimes rewrites. What is fixed is the direction of travel. The shoreline that has been the quiet part of McCormick Ranch for a generation is becoming one of its most active edges.
If you are a resident weighing whether to stay put through a renovation, adjust a listing timeline around the construction, or simply figure out where to take visiting family next February, the honest answer is that the calculus has moved. The neighborhood you bought into still has the lakes, the paths, and the mature trees. It is about to have a waterfront to match.
When you are ready to talk through what these changes mean for a specific street or property in McCormick Ranch, I would be glad to sit down with the numbers. Reach out to Desert Living Properties to get your home valuation and a straight read on how the lake edge story affects your address.
