Paradise Valley Mall Redevelopment: What's Open in North Phoenix

Since 2023, announcements about PV, the redevelopment rising where Paradise Valley Mall used to sit at Cactus Road and Tatum Boulevard, have described new tenants and a destination taking shape. To see what is open now, it helps to distinguish announced tenants from operating businesses. Of everything that's been announced since the mall came down in 2021, how much of it can you actually walk into today?

That question matters if you live anywhere near the 101 and Tatum corridor, because the project includes both businesses already open and tenants announced for later phases.

It's in Phoenix, Not the Town Next Door

First, a quick geography note that trips people up. "PV" borrows its name from Paradise Valley Mall, but the site sits inside Phoenix city limits, just north of the actual incorporated Town of Paradise Valley. If you've been picturing the redevelopment inside that famously low-density, resort-heavy town, it's not there. It's a Phoenix project that happens to share a name with its wealthier neighbor.

The mall itself opened in 1978 and closed in 2021, and demolition started that same year. What replaced it is a roughly 100-acre, $2 billion buildout led by RED Development, and it's been under construction, in phases, ever since.

What You Can Actually Walk Into Right Now

Here's what's open on the ground as of this fall. Whole Foods Market anchors the retail side. Fox Restaurant Concepts has two spots running, Blanco Reserva Cocina + Cantina and Flower Child. The Melt, a California burger-and-sandwich chain making its first appearance in the Valley, is open, along with Wren House Brewing Co., Frost Gelato Shoppe, Trevor's Liquor, Sephora, and Aveda. AVE Paradise Valley, the 400-unit apartment community that was the first residential piece to lease up, has been open since 2024.

The newest addition worth knowing about is Life Time Paradise Valley, a 92,000-square-foot athletic country club with Pilates and yoga studios, a spa, pickleball courts, and a rooftop pool club. It's the company's eighth Arizona location. Axios Phoenix reported in April that the club would open "next week," which puts its actual opening around early May. That means it's already logged a full Arizona summer of pickleball and rooftop pool club use, not a projected one. If your mental picture of PV still has this as a construction rendering, it's time to update it.

A few relics of the old mall are also still standing. When demolition crews came through in 2021, they left Costco, a JCPenney, and a Phoenix Public Library branch in place, all continuing to operate through the surrounding construction, according to KTAR News.

How the Announced Dates Have Changed

RED Development's own senior vice president, Jeff Moloznik, put it plainly to Axios in April:

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

That statement describes an ongoing project. Comparing announced dates with later updates shows how plans have developed since the first tenant announcements in 2023. Fender Musical Instruments' relocated headquarters was originally described as a late 2025 opening in an October 2025 announcement. By April 2026, RED's own briefing to Axios was still describing the Fender move in future tense, alongside Harry & Izzy's, which the same briefing said would arrive "this year." The Vig, once targeted for the first quarter of 2026, hadn't been confirmed as open by that same April update either. These examples show that individual opening dates may change, so it is useful to treat them as directional rather than fixed.

The tenants slated for 2027, Life Time Living's 327-unit high-rise and the wave that includes Helios Pilates, Culinary Gangster, Lululemon, Escapology, OBON, WeWhiten, and Next Health, are worth bookmarking rather than planning around. RED itself says the full 100 acres won't be finished until 2030.

Meanwhile, Desert Ridge Is Adding Tenants to an Existing Center

A few miles east, Desert Ridge Marketplace offers a different kind of update: additions to an existing retail center. Vestar recently completed a $22 million renovation of the already-built, 1.2-million-square-foot center, and it's now adding four new dining and drink concepts over a single twelve-month window. Nadu, a modern Indian restaurant from Chef Sujan Sarkar that made the 2025 Michelin Guide, opened in a 4,024-square-foot space earlier this year. Kajiken, a Nagoya, Japan ramen shop known for its brothless abura soba, was originally targeted for the end of 2025 and was still listed as an upcoming opening in coverage as recent as this summer. Terra Gaucha Brazilian Steakhouse was targeting a summer 2026 opening, and an 800-square-foot cocktail lounge called Globe in the Dark, built around a passport-style loyalty card, rounds out the group.

The contrast is useful. PV is a ground-up rebuild of dead retail space, which means every new tenant also depends on utility work, structural buildout, and a master schedule that can slip. Desert Ridge is a finished, functioning center with over 100 existing retailers, so its four newcomers are simply filling space next to Dave & Buster's, Kona Grill, Yard House, and Barrio Queen, which shortens the distance between announcement and opening night considerably.

If You Want to Test PV This Week

You don't need to wait for the 2027 wave to get a feel for the place. A short loop using only what's already open:

1. Start with a Pilates or yoga class at Life Time Paradise Valley, which has been running classes since early May.
2. Walk over to Blanco Reserva Cocina + Cantina or Flower Child for dinner, both open since the first leasing phase.
3. Close the night at Wren House Brewing Co., which has built a following well beyond north Phoenix for its beer.

That's a real evening you can have this weekend, not a preview of one you'll be able to have someday.

The bigger picture is that PV is a decade-long project that's currently a little past its own halfway point, with a genuinely open, genuinely useful core and a much longer tail still working through construction schedules and lease-up timelines. Tenant announcements describe individual openings; read together and sorted by date, they show a neighborhood center that's real but still assembling itself, block by block, through at least 2027.

If you're weighing what a corner like Cactus and Tatum means for property values, walkability, or where north Phoenix is headed next, that's the kind of on-the-ground read that doesn't show up in a listing description. Valley Leaders tracks these shifts across every corner of the Phoenix metro, from Scottsdale's estate market to the growth corridors out west, and we're always glad to talk through what a specific block or development means for your own plans, whenever those plans take shape.