PV Keeps Announcing Restaurants. Here's What's Actually Open Right Now.

"By this time next year, this will be a dramatically different place."

That's Jeff Moloznik, senior vice president at RED Development, talking to Axios about PV on April 24, 2026. It's a good line. It's also one he's said a version of before. Back in January 2025, he described the first wave of openings at the former Paradise Valley Mall site as "a great sample of more to come," with the second phase eventually becoming "the community gathering spot." About fifteen months separate those two quotes. Both describe the same unfinished promise.

If you live near Cactus Road and Tatum Boulevard, you don't need another roundup of "coming soon" signage. You need to know what's actually serving food, pouring drinks, or letting you rack up a squat rack right now, versus what's still a rendering with a 2026 label stapled to it. That distinction matters more here than in most redevelopments, because PV has spent two years announcing tenants on a schedule its own press releases can't keep.

The Pattern: Announced Early, Opened Late (Sometimes)

In April 2025, RED's senior director of marketing, Kristen Hernandez, told ABC15 exactly when to expect the next wave. "Likely Q1 of 2026, we'll see the next big round of openings for a handful of these tenants. Obviously, with that far out, we have some moving timelines, but Q1 will be a lot of our next round of openings for retailers and restaurants here."

Q1 2026 has come and gone. Some of what she was describing showed up close to on time. Some of it hasn't shown up at all.

That's not a knock on the project. A bulldozed mall near Cactus Road and Tatum Boulevard giving way to a 100-acre mixed-use neighborhood is a genuinely large undertaking, and the redevelopment is only about half finished, with Moloznik estimating full buildout won't wrap until 2030. But it does mean the difference between "announced" and "open" at PV can run over a year, and if you're planning a dinner around a name you saw in a headline more than a year ago, you should check first.

What Was Promised vs. What's True Today

Here's how six of the most talked-about tenants have actually tracked against their original timelines, based on the most recent public reporting available.

Two of those, Velvet Taco and Life Time, landed inside their announced window. Two others, The Vig and Cala, had already blown past the Q1 2026 target their own developer set, with no update since. And one, Harry & Izzy's, is the rare case where there's an actual, locked-in calendar date to work with rather than a season or a year.

What's Open If You Want to Eat, Drink, or Work Out This Week

Strip away the pending announcements and here's what you can actually walk into at PV right now:

• Whole Foods Market relocated here from its longtime spot near Tatum and Shea, and the new location spans more than 50,000 square feet and stocks more than 330 items made or grown in Arizona, including produce from Duncan Family Farms and flour from Hayden Flour Mills.
• Blanco Reserva Cocina + Cantina and Flower Child, both Fox Restaurant Concepts locations that opened early in the first phase.
• The Melt, a California burger and sandwich chain, in what was its first restaurant outside California.
• Trevor's Liquor, which took over the former Sears Auto Center site. The 14,000-square-foot venue is more than a place to pick up a six-pack, with a full-service bar, pizzeria, golf simulator, cigar lounge and a dog-friendly patio.
• Sephora
• Wren House Brewing Co., Hawaiian Bros Island Grill, and Frost Gelato Shoppe, all part of a batch set to open in May 2025, meaning they've now been serving the neighborhood for well over a year.
• Velvet Taco, confirmed open by early April 2026 after debuting first in Old Town Scottsdale.
• Life Time Paradise Valley, the athletic country club that opened in early May 2026. It's the brand's eighth Arizona location, and the 92,000-square-foot club includes Pilates and yoga studios, a spa, pickleball courts and a rooftop pool club.

That's a real, current list. Everything else you've read about PV in the last year is still in the pipeline.

The One Date You Can Actually Circle

Most of PV's "2026" tenants are still operating on a range rather than a date. Harry & Izzy's is the exception, and it's worth marking on your calendar because it's sixteen days from now.

The Indianapolis-based restaurant group is slated to open August 26, 2026, and it's a notable one for the Valley's dining scene. The restaurant will occupy a standalone 8,300-square-foot building at the northeast corner of the development's park block, and it's a sister restaurant to the iconic St. Elmo Steak House in Indianapolis, known for its classically inspired menu, lively bar and richly designed interiors. For Huse Culinary, this is new territory entirely outside its Midwest home base.

Cala, by contrast, is still waiting on a date. The Beau MacMillan concept, which first opened in Scottsdale in 2022 to widespread acclaim for its coastal-European menu, is slated to occupy a 6,500-square-foot space west of Blanco Reserva, but as of the most recent reporting, "2026" is as specific as it gets. Same with The Vig, the local tavern chain born nearly 20 years ago in Phoenix's Arcadia neighborhood, which was supposed to land in Q1 2026 and, per the company, now plans to open "this year" without a firmer commitment.

Why the Math Doesn't Work Like a Grand Opening

The temptation is to treat PV like a single ribbon-cutting. It isn't. It's a series of overlapping construction schedules, leasing timelines, and buildout phases that don't move at the same speed, even when they're announced in the same press release.

The mall itself opened in 1978, and RED Development purchased the site from Macerich for $100 million in March 2021. That was five years ago. In the time since, AVE Paradise Valley, the 400-unit apartment community, started leasing in fall 2024 right on its original schedule, and Fender Musical Instruments' 77,000-square-foot co-headquarters was targeting a fall 2025 completion. Meanwhile, other pieces are stacking up years out. Life Time Living, an 11-story, 327-unit apartment tower, isn't slated to come online until 2027, and a separate 335-unit project from Transwestern Development is targeting late 2026 for its first units.

None of that is a red flag. It's just how a $2 billion, 100-acre project actually gets built: in pieces, on staggered clocks, with some announcements landing early and others sliding a year or more. What's useful to know if you live here is that the only physical remnants of the old mall era, Costco, JCPenney, and a Phoenix Public Library branch, are still standing and still open, right alongside all this new construction. The old and the new are sharing a parking lot right now, and will be for a while yet.

What This Means If You Live Near Cactus and Tatum

If you've been holding off on a dinner plan because you heard "Cala is coming to PV," that headline is now more than a year old and still hasn't turned into an open door. If you've been meaning to check out the new gym, Life Time has been open since early May. And if you want a restaurant opening you can actually plan around, August 26 is the one date on this list with no asterisk next to it.

PV is anchored by a centrally located park that already hosts community events, and that park is going to keep filling in with names over the next few years. The smart move if you live nearby isn't to track every announcement. It's to check back every few months and see what's actually serving customers, because the gap between the two keeps proving wider than the press releases suggest.

If you're weighing what a neighborhood like Paradise Valley actually looks like day to day, beyond what's under construction at any given moment, that's the kind of on-the-ground read Mary King can walk you through. Reach out for a conversation about what's really happening in the neighborhoods she works in every day.