Drive the stretch of McCormick Parkway near Scottsdale Road this month and you will pass two properties in the middle of becoming something else. One is a shuttered restaurant building on Camelback Lake, waiting on a wrecking ball. The other is a nearly 50-year-old office tower that has housed the same company for close to three decades, now wrapped in construction fencing.
Neither project was planned by the same people. Neither was announced as part of some larger vision for the neighborhood. But together they mean something residents have not had in the fifty years since McCormick Ranch was platted around its ten lakes: an actual lakefront, with more than one address on it.
A neighborhood built around water that was mostly locked up
McCormick Ranch has never lacked for lake views. What it has lacked is public access to them. For 41 years, the best table on Camelback Lake belonged to exactly one business. Chart House opened there in 1984 and became known for its unobstructed views of the lake and Camelback Mountain, the kind of table you booked for an anniversary rather than a Tuesday. It closed its doors for good on June 30, 2025, ending four decades as the corridor's only real lakefront dining destination.
Meanwhile, the office building near that same intersection was never a restaurant at all. Forever Corporate Plaza, a 100,000-square-foot tower at 7501 E. McCormick Parkway originally built in 1978, has been the headquarters of Forever Living Products for close to 30 years. Great mountain views, zero pedestrian activity. That parcel's lake frontage has spent three decades behind a lobby desk, not a hostess stand.
Between them, that is the entire lakefront inventory in this part of McCormick Ranch: one restaurant, one office building. Everything else that makes this neighborhood's dining scene genuinely good, PHX Beer Co's dog-friendly patio off the Scottsdale Bike Path, Grassroots Kitchen & Tap, Crust Simply Italian, Campo Italian Bistro & Bar, sits inland along the greenbelt and shopping corridors, not on the water itself.
The Chart House site: a hometown buyer, a ground-up rebuild
The company that bought the Chart House property is not an out-of-state hospitality group chasing a trophy address. Prime Steak Concepts is owned by brothers Michael and Jeffrey Mastro, their father Dennis Mastro, and partner Scott Troilo, the team behind Steak 44, Ocean 44, Dominick's Steakhouse and Durant's. All four are Valley names, and the Mastro brothers have a personal connection to this specific stretch of shoreline.
"My brother Mike and I grew up just a few blocks away in McCormick Ranch and this is the perfect place for us to do something very special that fits this iconic location."
That's Jeff Mastro, speaking after the purchase was announced. The plan is not a remodel. The existing 10,000-square-foot building is coming down, and the group is designing an entirely new restaurant from the ground up, with the concept and name still under wraps as of this writing.
Here is where residents should pay attention to conflicting information rather than assume a firm date. Several outlets, including a KTAR report and the group's own statements, point to a fall 2026 opening. At least one food-industry outlet has pegged the project closer to 2027, given that demolition and a full ground-up build take longer than a typical renovation. Until Prime Steak Concepts confirms a date publicly, the safer assumption for anyone planning a special dinner on that shoreline is next year at the earliest, possibly later.
Across the parkway, a different kind of project entirely
While one lakefront parcel is getting a single, high-end steakhouse, the other is getting something closer to a district. Diversified Partners, the Scottsdale-based firm acquiring Forever Corporate Plaza from Forever Living Products, is converting the building into a mixed-use destination called Lakefront at Scottsdale. Company founder Walt Brown Jr. has described the design as a modern Santa Barbara aesthetic, a notable departure from the office-park architecture that has defined this address since the 1970s.
Forever Living Products is staying put as a tenant, which keeps some continuity at a site that has housed the same company for nearly three decades. But the rest of the building is being reimagined around restaurants, retail and wellness tenants instead of cubicles. Plans call for four sit-down restaurants with lakefront patios, boutique and wellness retail space, a valet arrival sequence the developer is calling Forever Lane, and a small marina with Duffy boat rentals, the electric, low-speed boats that have become a staple of upscale waterfront developments elsewhere in the Valley.
The economics behind the bet are worth knowing if you have ever wondered why this particular office building, and not another, is getting the upscale treatment. Within a three-mile radius of the site, average household income tops $205,000, according to project details reported by Greater Phoenix In Business Magazine in June 2026. That is the kind of number a developer points to when justifying multiple upscale restaurants on a single shoreline rather than one.
Construction is happening in phases. As of this summer, demolition and renovation work on the restaurant and retail portions of the site is already underway, ahead of a broader buildout that will eventually touch the office space too.
| Then | Now | |
|---|---|---|
| Chart House site | Single restaurant, same operator since 1984 | Ground-up rebuild by Prime Steak Concepts, targeting fall 2026 |
| Forever Corporate Plaza | Single-tenant office HQ for close to 30 years | Multi-tenant dining, retail and marina district, phased construction underway |
What actually changes if you already live here
None of this requires anyone to move, buy, or sell anything. But it does change a few things about daily life on this end of the neighborhood.
The most immediate change is construction. Two active build sites on the same short stretch of McCormick Parkway means some noise and detour patterns through at least 2026, longer if the Chart House site lands closer to its 2027 estimate than its fall 2026 one.
The longer-term change is choice. For the first time, this stretch of shoreline will offer more than a single lakefront dinner option. Whether that means booking whatever new concept Prime Steak Concepts unveils, or grabbing a table at one of the four restaurants planned for Lakefront at Scottsdale, residents who have driven past a locked-up corporate lobby and a closed steakhouse for the better part of a year are going to have actual reservations to make.
One thing that is not changing: the rules on the water itself. McCormick Ranch's lakes remain governed by the McCormick Ranch Property Owners' Association. Of the neighborhood's ten lakes, only five, Camelback Lake, Lake Margherite, Santa Fe Lake, Lake Nino and Lake Angela, permit fishing, and even then it is catch-and-release with artificial lures only, under a permit issued through MRPOA. Swimming is not allowed on any of them. A new marina and a handful of restaurant patios will not change any of that. If you already fish Camelback Lake, the water the old Chart House sat on, you will still need the same permit once there is a hostess stand a short walk from your line.
The neighborhood's connective tissue stays the same too. Both sites sit along the same path and greenbelt network that already links McCormick Ranch's parks, lakes and golf courses, which means the new restaurants and retail will be reachable on foot or by bike for anyone already using that system for a morning walk or an evening ride, not just by car.
Watching two clocks at once
What makes this moment unusual is that nobody planned it as a single story. A hometown restaurant family bought one shoreline parcel because they grew up a few blocks from it. A commercial developer bought the other because the income numbers around it justified betting on multiple upscale tenants instead of one. Two separate decisions, two separate timelines, landing on the same short stretch of parkway in the same year.
For a neighborhood that has had exactly one lakefront address for as long as most current residents have lived here, that is worth watching closely, whichever year these plans fully open.
If you are curious how changes like this tend to move property values or rental demand in specific pockets of McCormick Ranch, that is exactly the kind of granular, address-level read Denise McManus tracks across North Scottsdale. Reach out anytime for a current read on the market, or get your instant home valuation to see where your property stands today.
