If you've driven the stretch of Tatum Boulevard near Cactus Road anytime in the last two years, you've watched the same intersection cycle through demolition dust, tower cranes, and enough "Coming Soon" banners to make you stop reading them. The old Paradise Valley Mall closed in 2021 and came down not long after, and what's rising in its place, a hundred-plus acres that everyone just calls "PV," has been announced and re-announced so many times that it's hard to know what's actually running versus what's still a rendering on a leasing office wall.
Here's the thing worth knowing if you live anywhere near that corner: the splashiest names, the ones that got the press releases and the local news hits, are mostly still not open. The quiet stuff opened months ago and nobody made a fuss about it.
The Corner That Kept Being "Almost Ready"
RED Development, the Phoenix firm behind the project, has been candid that this is a long build. As of spring 2026, the redevelopment was roughly half finished, with the full hundred-acre build-out not expected to wrap until around 2030. RED's Jeff Moloznik put it plainly to a local reporter earlier this year:
"By this time next year, this will be a dramatically different place."
That's the right way to think about PV. Not a finished neighborhood you evaluate once, but a place that keeps changing shape while you wait. Which is exactly why a status check matters more here than it would for a mall that opened all at once in 1978, the way the original Paradise Valley Mall did.
What You Can Actually Walk Into Today
Based on the most recent public tenant tracking, here's the honest split between open and still-pending:
| Open Now | Still Anticipated (2026) |
|---|---|
| Whole Foods Market (relocated from Shea and Tatum in October 2024) | Cala, the coastal-European concept from Clive Collective |
| Wren House Brewing Co. | Harry & Izzy's, an Arizona debut for the Indianapolis grill group Huse Culinary |
| Federal Pizza | The Vig, opening its eighth Valley location, a favorite that started in Arcadia nearly 20 years ago |
| Blanco Reserva Cocina + Cantina | |
| Flower Child | |
| The Melt | |
| Trevor's Liquor | |
| Velvet Taco (opened March 2026) | |
| Life Time Paradise Valley (opened April 30, 2026) |
Notice what's missing from the right column now that it's September. Cala, Harry & Izzy's, and The Vig are the three names that generate the most local buzz, and all three were still listed as "anticipated this year" as of the most recent tenant update in April. If you've been holding off on a visit until the marquee restaurants show up, you could be waiting a while longer. If you've been assuming there's nothing worth stopping for until then, you're missing eight kitchens and a grocery store that have been open for months.
The Building That Used to Fix Your Car
The detail that tells you the most about how this redevelopment actually works isn't a chef or a menu. It's Trevor's Liquor, which took over the site's former Sears auto shop and turned it into a 14,000-square-foot bar, bottle shop, pizzeria, golf simulator, and cigar lounge with a dog-friendly patio. Moloznik has called it one of the more surprising transformations on the property, noting the finished space still carries visual cues from the old auto shop even though it's now unrecognizable as one.
That's the pattern worth watching as PV keeps building out. The project isn't demolishing everything and starting from a blank slate. Pieces of the old mall's infrastructure, parking structures, loading corridors, even a tire center, are getting repurposed into the new layout instead of scraped entirely.
The Gym With a Beach Club Attached
The single biggest thing to actually open at PV this year wasn't a restaurant. It was Life Time Paradise Valley, a 91,000-square-foot athletic club at 12800 North Tatum Boulevard that opened April 30. It's been running for close to five months now, long enough that the initial press cycle has faded even though most people nearby haven't set foot inside.
The club includes a rooftop pool deck with lounge seating for 300 people, seven pickleball courts split between three indoor and four outdoor, a full LifeSpa, and a Kids Academy for children as young as three months. Next door, Life Time Living Paradise Valley, an 11-story tower with 327 units, is under construction with completion targeted for 2027. Combined with AVE Paradise Valley, a 400-unit apartment community that started leasing back in fall 2024, PV is quietly building a resident base that will outlast the retail news cycle. This isn't just a place people drive to for dinner. It's becoming a place people already live within walking distance of their gym, their grocery store, and eventually their neighbors' front doors.
The corner also picked up a corporate anchor along the way. Fender Musical Instruments broke ground on a three-story Arizona co-headquarters at PV in September 2024, originally targeted to open in fall 2025, adding daytime foot traffic that a purely residential or retail project wouldn't generate on its own.
What This Means If You Already Live Near Cactus and Tatum
You don't need to wait for Cala or Harry & Izzy's to make PV worth a stop this month. Fall Arizona Restaurant Week runs statewide from September 18 through September 27, with more than 200 participating restaurants offering three-course prix-fixe menus at $33, $44, or $55. It's worth checking the full participant list at arizonarestaurantweek.com before you plan a night out, since lineups shift year to year and restaurant to restaurant. Either way, it's a good excuse to treat the corner you've been driving past as a destination rather than a construction detour, whether that means a beer at Wren House, a pie at Federal Pizza, or finally seeing what Whole Foods' new 50,000-square-foot store looks like compared to the smaller one that stood at Shea and Tatum for 22 years before it moved.
The names still on the way are worth tracking too. When Cala, Harry & Izzy's, and The Vig do open, they'll round out a dining lineup that spans everything from fast-casual tacos to a twenty-year-old Arcadia institution setting up shop in a brand new building. Until then, the honest answer to "what's actually open at PV" is: more than you'd think, and less than the headlines suggest.
If you've been watching this corner change and you're curious what it means for property values or what's coming next in the surrounding pockets of north Phoenix, that's a conversation I have with clients regularly. Reach out to Kelleigh Evans to schedule a consultation whenever you're ready to talk through it.
