Walk from Fifth Avenue toward the Waterfront this week and you'll pass two things that would have surprised you a year ago: a rooftop bar with a wait for the elevator, and a parking lot that used to hold more than 100 vendors every Saturday morning and now just sits there, empty, waiting for October.
Those two things are usually told as separate stories. One is a dining roundup. The other is a scheduling notice. But they're happening in the same few blocks in the same summer, and the connection between them says more about what it's actually like to live in Old Town right now than either story does on its own.
The five-minute rectangle
For years, a night out in Old Town meant driving somewhere, circling for parking, and driving somewhere else if the first place had a wait. That's changing this summer, not because any single restaurant is that good, but because six of them are landing inside a walkable loop bounded roughly by Scottsdale Road, Camelback Road, Stetson Drive, and Third Avenue.
Here's what's actually there right now:
| New spot | Taking over | Status as of early August |
|---|---|---|
| 40 LOVE | New build in Old Town | Open, from co-founders Sean Mulholland and Avery Johnson Jr., developed with Niall Horan and DeAndre Hopkins |
| Above All Else | Former STK space, 7134 E. Stetson Dr. | Open, second-floor rooftop concept |
| Drake's Hollywood | Former Buca di Beppo, 3828 N. Scottsdale Rd. | Was on track for a late-July debut, old Hollywood decor, valet-only entrance |
| DEPWAH | Same stretch as 40 LOVE | Coming later this year, rooftop lounge and Vietnamese coffee bar |
| Ari & Lloyd | Former cabinetry showroom | In the works |
| BOA Steakhouse | Scottsdale Waterfront, two blocks east on Camelback | Was targeted for the first half of 2026, so it should be pouring by now |
Four of those six sit on second floors or higher, which is its own small shift for a district that's historically built its dining scene at street level. Austin Walter, CEO of Above All Hospitality, the group behind Above All Else, has said the appeal for diners right now is straightforward: "a lot of diners are looking for that Instagrammable wow factor when they go out." BOA's kitchen will be led by Executive Chef Brendan Collins, whose background includes Michelin-starred kitchens in London, and the Scottsdale location is set to be the first in Arizona to feature a signature ribeye sourced through a partnership with Four Sixes Ranch, the Texas operation known from its screen presence in Yellowstone.
Draw a line between the five confirmed addresses and it forms a loop you can cover on foot in about fifteen minutes. That's the actual news here. Not that Old Town got more restaurants, it always does, but that this particular batch clustered tightly enough to turn a summer evening into something you can plan without touching your car.
What isn't in the rectangle
Not everything opening in Scottsdale this year fits that walkable picture, and the exception is useful. Mendocino Farms, the California sandwich and salad chain, opened its first Arizona location this year at The Shops Gainey Village, at the northeast corner of Scottsdale Road and 73rd Place. That's a few miles north of the Camelback-to-Stetson rectangle, and it's a lunchtime fast-casual spot, not a rooftop lounge.
The distinction matters. What's compressing into a walkable core right now is specifically evening and nightlife dining. Daytime, fast-casual growth is still spreading out along the Scottsdale Road corridor the way it always has. If you live inside the rectangle, your Tuesday dinner options just multiplied. If you live near Gainey Village, your lunch options did instead. Different clock, different geography.
The lot that used to hold Saturday mornings
Here's the part that hasn't made it into any of the restaurant roundups. The Old Town Scottsdale Farmers Market, which has run on Brown Avenue since 2009 with more than 100 local growers and specialty food producers, is dark right now. That part is normal. The market always closes for the worst of the summer heat, this year on a schedule that ran 8am to noon in May and 7 to 10am through late June before going quiet.
What isn't normal is what happens when it's supposed to reopen. According to the market's own listing, it will not return to Brown Avenue when the season turns in October. It's relocating permanently to the City Hall parking lot at 75th Street and Bennie Gonzales Way, a move driven by a $20.9 million expansion of the Brown Avenue parking garage that currently anchors the site.
That's a long run for a Saturday routine on one parking lot. If your weekend has revolved around that spot, the fresh bread, the same vendor selling free-range eggs, this fall is the first time the location itself changes.
Same summer, same squeeze
Nobody has connected these two stories outright, and to be fair, the market's move isn't officially framed as a restaurant story. But it's worth sitting with the timing. A parking structure gets bigger. A produce market loses its lot to make room for more cars. And two blocks away, six new restaurants are opening on second floors and inside former retail shells because there's nowhere left at street level to put them.
That's not a coincidence with a tidy explanation. It's a pattern. Old Town is a small, low-rise footprint that hasn't gotten any bigger, and every new use for that space, whether it's a rooftop bar or a bigger parking garage, comes at the expense of whatever was there before. This summer, the tradeoff landed on a farmers market that's been part of Saturday mornings since 2009. Next time, it might land somewhere else.
What still runs on the old clock
Not everything in Old Town is shifting. Some of the neighborhood's rhythms haven't moved at all, and they're worth knowing if you're new to the area or just haven't been paying attention lately.
The Scottsdale Arts District still runs its Weekly ArtWalk every Thursday from 7 to 9pm, free, year-round except Thanksgiving, with galleries along Main Street and Marshall Way keeping their doors open late. A few times a year the Scottsdale Gallery Association dresses it up as a themed Gold Palette evening. The most recent one, a Summer Spectacular on July 9, ran from 6:30 to 9pm with live music woven through the air-conditioned galleries.
Right now, through August 9, Arizona Chef's Week is running its "Inside the Kitchen" series, pairing prix-fixe menus with behind-the-scenes chef interviews at spots like Citizen Public House and Pinyon Coastal Mediterranean. And on Sundays through August 23, Hotel Valley Ho is hosting its Bar Brawl, a bartending competition that's been pulling in names like Fernando Bambaren of Virtù Honest Craft and Juan Garcia of The Ends.
Those events aren't new, and they don't need to be. They're the part of Old Town that stays put while the storefronts around them turn over.
The takeaway for anyone already living here
If you're inside that walkable rectangle, this is genuinely a different summer than last year's. You can end up at a rooftop table without ever getting back in your car. But the same forces that made that possible are the ones that just pushed a long-running Saturday tradition out of the spot it's always held. Worth knowing before you assume the market will just be back on Brown Avenue like always.
If any of this, a new lease turning over, a market relocating, a neighborhood quietly rearranging itself, makes you curious about what your own property is actually worth in a district that's changing this fast, that's a conversation worth having before the next round of openings changes the math again. The Cryb Collective knows Old Town block by block, not just from a spreadsheet. Let's Connect.
