For years, the stretch of Camelback between 24th and 32nd Streets emptied out at 5:30. Office towers went dark, the Esplanade fountains ran to nobody in particular, and residents who lived a five-minute walk away drove past it on the way to Old Town or Arcadia for dinner. That default is breaking. Between the reopened Esplanade block, a proposed adaptive reuse of an 80s office building, and a Fashion Park redevelopment that could put housing where Saks used to sit, the Biltmore is quietly becoming a place you can spend a full evening in without starting the car.
If you already live here, the practical question is which of these openings are worth walking to now, which are still on paper, and what changes about your Thursday night in the next twelve months.
The Esplanade block is finished, and it's a block now
The most concrete shift sits at 2425 E. Camelback Road. Phoenix's Biltmore neighborhood is getting a slew of new restaurants, cafes and bars, largely thanks to a $50 million renovation of Esplanade, a business campus located on Camelback Road and 26th Street. That number is worth pausing on. Fifty million in a business park usually means new elevators and a lobby refresh. Here it bought a hospitality anchor.
Three side-by-side concepts from restaurateurs Rick Phillips and Peter Hearn now share the ground floor:
- Little Pickle, the Jewish deli that ran as a pop-up in 2022, reopened permanently in the summer of 2025. It mainly operates as a take-out style shop to cater to the surrounding office workers, but there are a handful of tables for eat-in dining.
- The Mercer, a bistro and martini bar, opened next door in the former MercBar space. Phillips and his business partner Peter Hearn also opened The Mercer this summer in the former MercBar location next door to Little Pickle. Part bistro, part martini bar, The Mercer offers a fresh raw bar, sushi handrolls and a selection of high-end meat and seafood entrees.
- Camello, the flagship, opened on February 2, 2026. High-end Mexican restaurant and lounge Camello opens today at the The Esplanade on the southeast corner of Camelback and 24th Street in Phoenix's Biltmore neighborhood. The 6,000-square-foot venue is the latest concept from 151 Hospitality, the team behind the Jewish deli Little Pickle and martini lounge The Mercer, both of which opened last year at The Esplanade.
Camello's kitchen is run by executive chef Julio Mata, a native of Guaymas, Mexico, who started at the legendary Barrio Café before opening all the Barrio Queen locations. The menu leans harder than most Biltmore rooms toward regional Mexican specificity: tlayudas (a sort of Mexican pizzas made with Oaxacan crispy tortillas), a tableside ceviche cart, a variety of aguachiles, enchiladas featuring three colorful moles (negro, rojo, and verde), and a 48-ounce carne asada tomahawk ribeye for sharing.
The relevant detail for someone who lives here is that these three sit within about 150 feet of each other. A morning bagel run, a weekday lunch meeting, and a Saturday reservation now come from one address instead of three separate drives. Phillips and Hearn framed the bet in their own words: "We are seeing the renewed energy of the Camelback Corridor with The Little Pickle, The Mercer, our immediate neighbors at Esplanade and of course the social scene at Global Ambassador and Steak 44, and we wanted to be part of its renaissance."
What's coming inside the walking radius
Two more openings within the same square mile will change the calculus again before the end of 2026.
The first is a longtime local. Fà-me Café, the locally owned breakfast and lunch restaurant founded by Maria and Ivan O'Farrill, is expected to relocate later this year from its longtime home at 4700 N. Central Ave. to the 24th at Camelback office complex at 2375 E. Camelback Road in the city's Biltmore neighborhood. According to a recent report by the Phoenix Business Journal, the move is expected to take place during the fourth quarter of 2026. That drops a well-known breakfast and lunch operator directly across the street from the Esplanade block, which fills the one weekday gap the 151 Hospitality trio doesn't cover well.
The second is still a proposal, not a certainty. Joey Restaurant Group, a Canadian restaurant company, has proposed opening its first location in Arizona where an office building now stands on Camelback Road near 32 Street in Phoenix. The restaurant group has proposed an adaptive reuse project for the office building that now stands at the southwest corner of Camelback Road and 31st Street, according to documents submitted to the city of Phoenix. The documents indicate the restaurant would be called Joey Biltmore. The site plan calls for an 8,736-square-foot restaurant with a 1,563-square-foot patio would be built on the east side of the property. That would replacing part of the current office building, and another part of it would be demolished.
Read together, three of the past decade's most persistent Camelback Corridor complaints are being answered at once: nothing to walk to at dinner, no strong breakfast anchor near 24th, and too much dated Class B office fronting the street.
The Fashion Park question
The bigger uncertainty sits one block west. In late July 2024, the mall was sold to RED Development, a local real estate company. On November 11, 2024, the mall's new owner announced it would be redeveloped. One of the plans is a ten-story tower, which might include a mix of retail and restaurants, office, hotel, and residential space.
Then, in early 2026, the anchor tenant that has defined the property since 1995 announced its exit. On February 10, 2026, it was announced that Saks Fifth Avenue would be closing as part of a plan to close 8 stores nationwide.
The reflex read is decline. The more likely read, given the RED Development plans already on file, is that Saks was going to be worth more as a redevelopment footprint than as an operating store. A ten-story mixed-use tower with residential and hotel components on a site with 610,000 sq ft (57,000 m2) of retail space would be the largest change to the corner of 24th and Camelback since the mall opened in 1963.
For current homeowners, the practical read is patience. Fashion Park is not going anywhere. Life Time and the dining anchors keep the property busy: a stellar line-up of destination restaurants, including The Capital Grille, Blanco Tacos & Tequila, Breakfast Club, True Food Kitchen and more. But the mall you knew in 2019 is not the mall of 2028, and how the Saks parcel gets replaced will affect sightlines, traffic patterns, and probably parking on the north side of Camelback.
Where the neighborhood actually gathers
Restaurants change hands. The Biltmore's older gathering spaces are still doing the quiet work of holding the neighborhood together.
Wrigley Mansion, on Telawa Trail above the resort, has kept a weekly schedule that reads more like a private club than a tourist stop. Current summer hours have Jazz: Thurs 7-8:30 PM at Geordie's, and the Mansion hosts recurring evenings such as Gather your players; grab your Mahj set! Come for a lively night of Mahjong in the Garden Room.
The Biltmore Area Partnership continues to use the Mansion as its default meeting room. Its August event is on the calendar: the Biltmore Area Partnership's August Happy Hour on Thursday, August 27, 2026, at The Wrigley Mansion, 2501 E. Telawa Trail in Phoenix, Arizona 85016. Unwind with fellow Biltmore-area business and community leaders over cocktails and light bites while taking in one of the most iconic skyline views in the Valley. If you have lived here more than a few years and never been, that Thursday is the low-friction way to meet people who own the buildings around you.
The Arizona Biltmore itself completed its own quieter reset in 2024, when Adobe Bar & Grille owners JDM Partners re-opened Adobe Bar & Grille following a 20-month renovation of Arizona Biltmore Golf Club, which included a complete redesign of The Estates Course (formerly the Adobe Course), a spectacular new Clubhouse, Golf Shop, and the addition of an event ballroom for weddings and other memorable events.
And at The Camby, the hotel debuted Yellowbell earlier this fall, officially opening on Oct. 1 and replacing Artizen. Executive Chef Alfredo Alvarez has crafted an all-day menu that emphasizes Southwestern flavors and local ingredients.
The residents' takeaway
The pattern behind all of these updates is not "more restaurants." It's a corridor rebuilding itself around walkability, on a footprint that used to be one-directional office traffic. A Biltmore homeowner in 2020 had two or three reliable evening rooms within a ten-minute walk. In late 2026 that number will be closer to a dozen, tied together by a single well-lit block at 24th and Camelback and framed by an evolving Fashion Park to the west.
The people who bought here for the address are quietly getting a different neighborhood than the one they moved into. That is a good problem to own.
If you are weighing what this all means for the value of your home, the pricing of your next listing, or whether now is the moment to trade up within the Biltmore, Arizona Proper Real Estate would welcome the conversation. Schedule a private consultation to talk through what these corridor changes mean for your specific block.
