If you have driven Scottsdale Road past Chaparral in the last few months, you have watched the old Scottsdale Plaza Resort disappear behind construction fencing and reappear as something else. Ten minutes north, at Cactus and Tatum, another cluster of restaurants is coming online at a slower pace. Both projects sit inside a Paradise Valley resident's normal weekend radius. Neither is finished.
The interesting part for anyone already living here is the timing gap between them. One corner is open for dinner tonight. The other is a calendar of soft openings running through the end of the year. Knowing which is which saves a wasted Saturday.
The short version, on a map
Open now, tonight, no wait for construction:
- Kimpton Miralina Resort & Villas at 7200 N. Scottsdale Road, phase one
- Hecho Libre, the resort's Baja and Sonoran restaurant
- Cima, the poolside bar
- Velvet Taco at the PV redevelopment
- Ten other food and retail tenants in and around PV
Still on the calendar:
- Cala, The Vig, Too Sweet Cakes, and Harry & Izzy's at PV, all slated for 2026
- Katsuya, Valley Villas, and The Enclave at Kimpton Miralina, running Q4 2026 into early 2027
That gap, between what is pouring drinks tonight and what is still framed in drywall, is the frame for the rest of this post.
What actually changed at 7200 N. Scottsdale Road
The address is the same one Paradise Valley residents have driven past for decades. The property behind it is not. Arizona's Scottsdale Plaza Resort has undergone a $42 million transformation and reopened as Kimpton Miralina Resort & Villas Paradise Valley. The property features 224 redesigned guest rooms and 36 casitas as part of the phase one debut.
That is the version most residents already know from the signage change. The version worth knowing is the second phase. The final phase of transformation runs from Q4 2026 to early 2027, including the addition of Arizona's first Katsuya restaurant. The final phase also includes 134 newly renovated Valley Villas and an onsen-inspired hotel-within-a-hotel called The Enclave. When the project is complete, the property will have 404 renovated keys, six pools, 22 indoor and outdoor event venues, and the two chef-driven restaurants.
For a neighbor, that translates to a very specific rhythm. Right now the lobby, the pool complex, and one full restaurant are running. Katsuya, the onsen concept, and the villa block are still months off. If you are trying to book a birthday dinner in November, aim for what is already open. If you are looking for a reason to walk in for the first time in January or February 2027, that is the return trip.
Hecho Libre, in practical terms
The resort's anchor restaurant is worth its own paragraph because the chef is not local, and residents deserve to know what they are walking into.
The restaurant is helmed by two-time James Beard Award finalist Chef Wes Avila, best known for his acclaimed Los Angeles dining hotspots Guerrilla Tacos and Ka'teen. He brings his ingredient-driven approach to regional Mexican cuisine to Arizona for the first time with Hecho Libre. The kitchen is not running on his LA playbook alone. Kimpton Miralina Executive Chef Stephen Jones, a fellow James Beard finalist and the property's culinary lead, served as Chef Avila's guide to the region's rich culinary heritage, introducing him to local purveyors, regional ingredients, and the tastes of the Valley.
A few things a resident will actually notice on the menu and the calendar:
- Pastries come from Cielito Rosa Bakery, a Latina-owned local pastry shop, with produce sourced from Blue Sky Organics in Litchfield Park and Ramona Farms in Sacaton.
- Every Friday from 6 to 8 p.m. Hecho Libre runs live music at the bar.
- The poolside bar Cima sits above the restaurant with artisanal cocktails.
Reviews in the first months have been mixed rather than unanimous, which is worth flagging honestly rather than pretending a soft opening is a finished product. A neighbor who wants to form their own opinion has enough runway to do that before the second phase changes the property again.
"Hecho Libre means 'made free.' It is about freedom in cooking, honoring tradition while creating your own path," Avila said in a statement. "We wanted to marry that idea with the spirit of the desert."
The other cluster, ten minutes north at Cactus and Tatum
The second story for the summer is not on Scottsdale Road at all. It is the redevelopment of the old Paradise Valley Mall site, now branded simply as PV. PV encompasses more than 100 acres of north Phoenix near Cactus Road and Tatum Boulevard. The redevelopment includes a variety of local and national concepts, as well as shops, office space and a 400-unit apartment complex.
Here is where the calendar matters. Velvet Taco joins the growing list of eateries now open at the revamped Paradise Valley Mall, with four more on the way. The four still to come, all slated for 2026:
Cala. An upscale Mediterranean eatery from the hospitality group Clive Collective, first opened inside Senna House Hotel Scottsdale in 2022, now opening a second location at PV. If you have eaten at the original, this is the same team.
The Vig. The Valley's neighborhood tavern from Genuine Concepts, arriving in Paradise Valley in 2026 as the eighth location. Expect mid-century modern design with nods to the town's history, including a 1970s-era post-and-beam entryway, adobe brick accents, and floor-to-ceiling windows onto the desert landscape. Artie A. Vigil III of AV3 design studio led the creative direction, sourcing adobe bricks from one of the state's last remaining adobe suppliers. Renowned chef Jeremy Pacheco is on the menu.
Too Sweet Cakes. Owner Shelbi Geyer launched the bakery in 2017 in Bend, Oregon, before arriving in Arizona and setting up a shop in Gilbert and a spot in Phoenix. The PV location is anticipated to open just north of Cala in the second quarter of 2026. The 1,700-square-foot bakery will feature a walk-up window for coffee, and inside, guests can watch the team decorate cakes while they order pastries, breakfast sandwiches and other bites.
Harry & Izzy's. Slated to open in summer 2026, the new location will be part of the PV redevelopment at the former Paradise Valley Mall site, arriving from Indianapolis as an upscale grill.
If you read that list as one long roll call, that is the shape of the current version of PV. If you read it as a staggered opening calendar, you get useful information. Velvet Taco is dinner tonight. Too Sweet Cakes is a Saturday coffee run in the fall. The Vig is a slower burn, likely a late-year housewarming for the block.
Why the timing gap matters more than the roster
Most write-ups on either project list the tenants and stop. For a resident, the tenant list is not the story. The story is that Paradise Valley now has two anchor projects opening on entirely different schedules, and each one changes the argument for a different corner of the town at a different point in the year.
The Scottsdale Road corridor is a right-now proposition. Book dinner at Hecho Libre, catch the Friday music, spend an afternoon at Cima, and by the time Katsuya lands sometime after October 2026, you will already know the property.
The Cactus and Tatum corridor is a return-visit proposition. One or two openings a quarter through the balance of 2026 means the block will feel meaningfully different every time you drop in. A resident who checks it out once in August, once in October, and once in December will see three different versions of the same address.
For anyone weighing whether Paradise Valley still feels like the quiet enclave it did five years ago, that is the actual answer. The town is not being reinvented. Two of its edges are getting new front doors, on two different calendars, and the middle of the town is doing what it has always done.
One last local note
The county still classifies the PV block as north Phoenix, not the incorporated town of Paradise Valley. For a resident, that distinction is a tax boundary, not a lifestyle one. The drive from Tatum and Lincoln to Cactus and Tatum is under ten minutes. The drive from most Paradise Valley addresses to 7200 N. Scottsdale Road is shorter than that. Both projects are, functionally, your neighborhood.
If you are the kind of neighbor who wants a real read on how these openings are landing, or on how the pace of change is showing up in specific pockets of Paradise Valley, that is the sort of question worth asking a team that lives in the same market you do. Huffman Davis Group tracks the town at that level of detail. Call Judy and Della when you want a local's take, whether that is on a Friday night reservation or a longer conversation about the street you live on.
