If you've circled McCormick Lake on an evening walk or coasted past it on the greenbelt path, you've seen the dark building on the water at 7501 E. McCormick Parkway. It's sat with the lights off since closing last year, a low-slung structure with lake frontage and no visible sign of life. Longtime residents know it as the Charthouse building, the seafood restaurant that opened there in 1984 and closed for good in 2025. What most people driving past never registered is that the Charthouse was the side dish. The building itself was, and still technically is, an office park.
That distinction matters more than it sounds like it should, because it's the whole story of what happens next. Scottsdale-based Diversified Partners closed on the roughly 100,000-square-foot property this year for $25 million, and it's about to flip the building's identity for the first time since it went up in 1978. The groundbreaking for the new project, called The Lakefront at Scottsdale, is set for September 24. For anyone who lives in McCormick Ranch and treats this stretch of water as part of a daily loop, here's what's actually locked in, what's still soft, and why the ratio of this site is about to change more than the tenant list.
An Office Building With a Restaurant on the Side, for Nearly Fifty Years
The property has operated under the name Forever Corporate Plaza for most of its life, owned by Forever Living Products for close to three decades. It's a Class A office building first and a dining destination second, which is exactly backwards from how most people who've eaten there or paddled past it on a pontoon boat would describe it. The Charthouse occupied the water-facing section, the part everyone actually noticed, while the bulk of the square footage behind it stayed office space nobody biking the path ever walked into.
That single-restaurant, mostly-office arrangement held for over forty years. It's why the building reads as a relic now: an office plaza that happened to have a nice view, built in an era before McCormick Ranch's lake and path system became the amenity people move their routines around. Forever Living Products isn't going anywhere in the new plan either. The company is staying on as an office tenant even as the rest of the building transforms around it, which is its own small piece of continuity in a project that's otherwise a full reset.
What's Actually Confirmed, and What's Still Just Talk
Diversified Partners has been rolling out tenant names ahead of the groundbreaking, and it's worth separating what's signed from what's still a conversation. Two food and beverage concepts have been named as confirmed tenants through the developer's own media advisories. A third is still being worked out, according to the people who'd actually have to sign the lease.
| Concept | What it is | Status |
|---|---|---|
| SUSHISAMBA | Sushi and raw seafood paired with charcoal-grilled dishes, drawing on the history of Japanese immigration to Brazil and Peru | Confirmed tenant, no opening date announced |
| La La Land Kind Cafe | Coffee, matcha, lattes, and toast, already operating at Kierland Commons and on 44th Street in Phoenix | Confirmed tenant, groundbreaking scheduled for September 24 |
| V Modern Italian | Contemporary Italian small plates and aperitivo-style dining under chef Stefano Ciotti | In talks, no lease signed as of this month |
That last line matters if you're the type of neighbor who mentions restaurant news at the mailbox before it's official. Diversified Partners named V Modern Italian as a future tenant in its advisory materials, but Ned Lyerly, CEO of the restaurant's parent company Fast Fine Restaurant Group, has said publicly that talks are ongoing and nothing is signed. La La Land Kind Cafe, meanwhile, is already a known quantity in the Valley, with locations at Kierland Commons and on 44th Street in Phoenix, plus previously reported plans for a spot at Biltmore Fashion Park. This would be its third or fourth Arizona address, not an experiment.
The Rest of the Waterfront: Retail, a Marina, and a Different Kind of Office Tenant
Restaurants are the headline, but they're not the whole plan. The retail portion is built around a jewelry store, a high-end salon, med spa uses, and wellness studios geared toward yoga and pilates, occupying storefronts along a pedestrian promenade on the lake's eastern edge. Restaurant space takes the south and west sides, closest to the water and facing Camelback Mountain. There's also a small marina planned for the site with Duffy boat rentals, a detail that turns the lake itself into part of the amenity rather than just a backdrop.
The arrival experience gets a name too. Diversified Partners has branded a dedicated valet drop-off "Forever Lane," a nod to the site's decades under Forever Living Products even as the company relocates its own regional headquarters into the redeveloped building, doubling its footprint there in the process. Office space isn't disappearing, in other words. It's just no longer the point.
Why the Ratio Is Flipping, Not Just the Tenant List
Here's the part that's easy to miss if you only skim the restaurant names. The old building had one restaurant tucked onto a corner of a 100,000-square-foot office park. The new plan calls for four separate dining spaces, each running roughly 5,400 to 10,400 square feet, with three of them adding patios in the 3,000 to 4,000 square foot range. That's not a restaurant added to an office building anymore. That's a food and beverage footprint large enough to be the building's main draw, with office space, including Forever Living's own operation, folded in around it.
For McCormick Ranch, a community built around man-made lakes and more than 25 miles of walking and biking paths, that inversion lines up with how people already use the neighborhood. The building at 7501 E. McCormick Parkway spent its whole life facing the wrong direction, oriented toward tenants who parked in a garage and never touched the water. The redevelopment orients it toward the people already walking past on the path every evening.
What Changes on Your Next Walk Around the Lake
Construction is set to happen in two phases. The first, beginning in the third quarter of 2026, right around the September 24 groundbreaking, focuses on demolition and renovation of the restaurant and retail portions. The second phase, expected to start in early 2027, carries the project through the remaining retail and office components. None of the three announced restaurant concepts have released opening dates yet, so don't expect dinner reservations this year. What you should expect over the next several months:
- Fencing and demolition activity on the water-facing side of the old Forever Corporate Plaza starting around the September groundbreaking
- No disruption to the lake path itself, since the work is contained to the building footprint
- Retail and wellness tenants (jewelry, salon, med spa, yoga and pilates studios) leasing up in parallel with the restaurant buildout, based on the merchandising plan Diversified Partners has described
- A second construction wave starting in early 2027 for the office and remaining retail space
The dark building on the lake has been part of the McCormick Ranch backdrop for so long that it stopped registering as strange. What's coming isn't a restaurant replacing an office building. It's a waterfront that finally gets built for the people already walking along it.
If you're weighing what a home along this stretch of Scottsdale is actually worth once a project like this lands, or you just want a straight answer about how development near the lake tends to play out, The Cryb Collective is a good place to start that conversation. Let's Connect.
