If you drove past Cactus Road and Tatum Boulevard sometime between 2021 and late 2024, you got used to seeing chain-link fencing and dirt where the old Paradise Valley Mall used to sit. For most of that stretch, "PV" was a rendering on a website, not a place you could actually go. That changed in fits and starts once Whole Foods and Flower Child opened their doors, but the pace since then has followed the pattern most people expect from a big redevelopment: a burst of anchor openings, then a long quiet stretch while the rest gets built out behind the scenes.
Except that is not what is happening right now. Look at the calendar for the last four months and the next ten days, and PV is compressing more openings into a shorter window than at any point since the first restaurants arrived. Life Time's athletic club opened April 30. Lululemon had its grand opening weekend in late July. Harry & Izzy's, a Midwest steakhouse making its first move outside Indiana, opens August 26. The Vig, an Arcadia tavern institution now on its eighth Valley location, is right behind it. If you live in the neighborhoods around Tatum and Cactus and assumed the redevelopment had settled into a slow, predictable drip, this is the month that assumption stops holding.
Why this particular stretch matters
Big mixed-use redevelopments usually follow a familiar arc. A grocery anchor and a handful of fast-casual restaurants open together to generate foot traffic, then the site goes quiet for a year or two while office space, apartments and the harder-to-build pieces catch up. That is roughly what happened here through 2025. But the second half of 2026 has flipped that script. Instead of slowing down after the grocery and retail anchors landed, PV's opening pace has picked up, and it is landing in a tighter window than the original wave did.
Jeff Moloznik, senior vice president at RED Development, put it plainly when the seven latest tenants were announced this spring: by this time next year, the site will look dramatically different again. That is not developer boilerplate. The project is still only about half built out on its roughly 100 acres, and Moloznik has said the full build is likely to run through 2030. What is happening this month is one visible chunk of a much longer runway, not the finish line. For someone who already lives nearby, that distinction matters. This is not the year PV finishes. It is the year it starts feeling like a place you go without thinking about it.
What just opened, what opens in ten days, and what's still a year out
Here is the timeline as it actually stands in mid-August 2026, pulled together in one place because most coverage of PV treats each announcement as its own story rather than part of a sequence.
| When | What | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| Fall 2024 | Whole Foods Market, Flower Child, Blanco Cocina + Cantina | First phase of retail and dining, built around a three-acre park with an amphitheater |
| March 2026 | Velvet Taco | Second Arizona location for the Dallas-born chain, serving globally inspired tacos and bowls |
| April 30, 2026 | Life Time Paradise Valley | 91,000-square-foot athletic club with a rooftop pool deck, seven pickleball courts (three indoor, four outdoor), and a Kids Academy |
| Late July 2026 | lululemon | Grand opening weekend with an in-store DJ |
| August 26, 2026 | Harry & Izzy's | Midwest American grill from Indianapolis's Huse Culinary, facing the central park; the group's first restaurant outside Indiana |
| Late summer or early fall 2026 | The Vig | Eighth Valley location for the Arcadia-born tavern, built around a patio with a semi-private desert garden |
| 2026 to 2027 | Cala, OBON, Culinary Gangster, Too Sweet Cakes | Later additions still in the pipeline, ranging from a coastal Mediterranean concept to a Tucson-born ramen and sushi spot |
Two things stand out reading that list in order rather than as scattered headlines. First, the gap between the fall 2024 wave and the March 2026 restart was over a year, which fits the usual redevelopment lull. Second, everything from April 2026 forward has landed inside a five-month window, with Harry & Izzy's and The Vig arriving back to back on the same greenspace corner. That is the part a resident scrolling local news one story at a time is likely to miss. It is not one more restaurant opening. It is a cluster.
The habits that are already in place
New openings get the headlines, but the more useful thing to know if you live in the area is what is already routine, because that is what tells you PV has stopped being a construction project and started being a place with its own rhythm.
Every Tuesday at 6:30 p.m., the Phoenix Run Club hosts a free weekly run through PV called RUN PV, open to any pace. Every Monday, Velvet Taco runs a Backdoor Chicken special, a whole rotisserie chicken with queso, guacamole, corn pico, tortillas and chips for $20. There is also a standing $10 deal on two scratch-made tacos and a fountain drink at Velvet Taco, available daily. None of that is tied to a grand opening or a press release. It is the kind of low-key recurring thing that only shows up if you are actually paying attention to the calendar week to week rather than checking in once a year.
That answers a question a lot of longtime residents have quietly been asking since the mall came down: does this place actually function as a neighborhood hangout, or is it just a strip of national retailers you drive to and leave. The weekly run club and the standing food specials suggest it has crossed into the former. A development does not bother building a recurring community run or a loyalty-style weekly special unless it expects people to show up on a normal Tuesday, not just for a ribbon cutting.
What's still a year or more out, and why that's fine
It is worth being honest about the parts of PV that are not close. Cala, the coastal Mediterranean restaurant from Food Network chef Beau MacMillan's Clive Collective, and OBON, a Tucson-born ramen and sushi concept making its third Valley appearance, are both still tracking toward later in 2026 or into 2027. Culinary Gangster and Too Sweet Cakes are in the same boat, expected sometime between later this year and 2027. Fender Musical Instruments is also relocating its headquarters from Scottsdale to PV, taking advantage of the site's proximity to State Route 51, though a corporate headquarters move does not change what is walkable on a Tuesday night.
None of that is a knock on the pace. It is a reminder that PV is being built in phases on purpose, and the phase landing right now, Life Time's rooftop pool and pickleball courts, lululemon's new storefront, Harry & Izzy's opening in ten days, The Vig close behind, is a real and specific moment rather than the whole story. If you are the kind of person who tracks a neighborhood by what is actually open rather than what a rendering promises, this particular month is the one where PV's second act became visible.
If you're watching this corner for other reasons
A lot of what makes a neighborhood feel different to live in shows up exactly like this, not in a single big announcement but in a run club that starts meeting on a normal Tuesday and a steakhouse patio that opens on a normal Wednesday in late August. If you have been curious about what a stretch like this means for property values or timing around North Phoenix more broadly, that is a longer conversation, and it is one the team at Janet Mohr's Mohr Group is glad to have whenever you are ready. For now, Harry & Izzy's opens August 26. Put it on the calendar.
