Ride the Indian Bend Wash path along McCormick Lake this month and you will pass two active construction sites within a half mile of each other. Both face the water. Both are replacing buildings that sat there since the Ford administration was barely in the rearview mirror. For a neighborhood built around ten lakes and more than 25 miles of paved paths, that is a strange thing to realize only now: the water itself was never really the destination. It was scenery for a bike ride that ended somewhere else.
That is changing on two fronts at once, and the timing is not a coincidence so much as two long-delayed clocks running out in the same year.
Two Buildings, One Long Wait
The site at 7501 E. McCormick Parkway has held an office building since 1978. Forever Living Products bought it nearly 30 years ago and has run its headquarters out of it ever since. A quarter mile or so down the shoreline, the old Chart House opened in 1984 and served the same view for four decades before closing last year.
Neither building was a failure. They just outlasted the era when a lakefront address in McCormick Ranch was worth more as office space and a steady dinner crowd than as anything bigger. Commercial property does not get rebuilt on a whim. It gets rebuilt when a lease ends, an owner sells, or a use simply runs out of runway. Both of those things happened here within roughly the same twelve months.
| Site | Built | What Just Ended | What's Coming | Target |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 7501 E. McCormick Parkway | 1978 | Nearly 30 years as Forever Living Products' headquarters | The Lakefront at Scottsdale: restaurants, retail, a marina, Class A office | Phase 1 in late 2026, phase 2 in early 2027 |
| Former Chart House site | 1984 | Closed in 2025 after 41 years | A steakhouse from Prime Steak Concepts, 12,000 to 14,000 square feet | June 2027 |
What Breaks Ground This Week
Diversified Partners closed on the 7501 E. McCormick Parkway site for $25.5 million in late May and is putting $70 million into the roughly 100,000-square-foot redevelopment, called The Lakefront at Scottsdale. Groundbreaking is set for September 24. Demolition and the restaurant and retail buildout come first, with a second phase covering the remaining retail and office space starting in early 2027.
Walt Brown Jr., the company's CEO, described the design as inspired by "modern Santa Barbara." He called it one of the most exciting projects of his career.
The plan keeps Forever Living Products in place as the office anchor, so the building's original tenant stays even as everything around it changes. New additions include a small marina with Duffy boat rentals, giving residents a way to reach the new restaurants by water instead of just by path or car, alongside sweeping views of the lake and Camelback Mountain that the site has always had but never built toward.
Three dining and beverage tenants are confirmed so far:
- SUSHISAMBA, whose menu traces the history of Japanese immigration to Brazil and Peru, pairing sushi and raw seafood with charcoal-grilled dishes and larger shared plates.
- V Modern Italian, an Italian concept joining the lakefront lineup.
- La La Land Kind Cafe, a café tenant rounding out the daytime side of the property.
More tenant announcements are expected as leasing continues ahead of the groundbreaking.
The Steakhouse Down the Shoreline
The Chart House closing in 2025 could have left that stretch of shoreline dark for years while a buyer figured out what to do with a restaurant-shaped hole on the water. Instead, Prime Steak Concepts is rebuilding the site into a steakhouse in the 12,000 to 14,000 square foot range, targeting a June 2027 opening.
Put next to The Lakefront at Scottsdale, this means two separate developers, working independently on two separate parcels, both landed on the same conclusion within the same stretch of shoreline: McCormick Ranch has had the rooftops and the lake for fifty years and never had the restaurant density to match. Two projects closing that gap in the same eighteen-month window is not a trend piece. It is a shoreline finally catching up to what has been living around it the whole time.
You Don't Have to Wait for Either One
None of this requires patience if you want a reason to walk or bike toward the water tonight. Starfish Scottsdale opened earlier this year at a spot in McCormick Ranch, marking Starfish Hospitality Group's first restaurant outside California. The roughly 5,200-square-foot space includes a 1,400-square-foot patio and leans into coastal Southeast Asian flavors, from a Thai spicy beef with basil to a lobster macadamia nut roll.
A few minutes away, Solidcore McCormick Ranch held its grand opening celebration July 12 and 13 at its studio on North Scottsdale Road, adding a reformer-based strength studio to the corridor's growing list of reasons to end a walk somewhere other than your own driveway.
Why the Water Sat Behind a Parking Lot This Long
Within three miles of the McCormick Lake corridor, more than 56,000 people live in households with an average income above $205,000. That number has likely looked roughly like this for years. What has not existed until now is the upscale, waterfront dining space to match it.
The explanation is not that developers overlooked the opportunity. It is that a fully leased office building and a working restaurant do not get torn down just because a better use exists on paper. Redevelopment waits for the lease to end or the sale to happen. Forever Living Products holding that office for close to three decades, and the Chart House running for 41 years, meant the site's highest use stayed frozen in place long after the surrounding demand had grown past it. Once both triggers arrived in the same short window, the shoreline could finally catch up to the neighborhood around it.
What Changes for Your Evening Loop
The Greenbelt path along Indian Bend Wash already carries joggers, dog walkers, and cyclists past McCormick Lake every evening. What is different starting this fall is where that loop can end. A ride that used to circle back to a parking lot can now end at a table on the water, or at a dock where a Duffy boat is waiting instead of a car.
That is a small shift measured against the scale of the construction underway, but it is the kind of shift that changes how a neighborhood actually spends its Tuesday nights, not just its headlines.
If you are curious how projects like this tend to shape values and demand in the surrounding streets over time, that is exactly the kind of neighborhood-level read Racquel Miller tracks closely across Scottsdale and Paradise Valley. Let's connect if you would like a closer look at what is happening around McCormick Lake, or anywhere else in the Valley you call home.
