Ride the Indian Bend Wash path along McCormick Lake at golden hour and you'll pass the same view that's been there for decades: water on one side, a chain-link line of backyards and golf frontage on the other, and across the lake, a resort patio you can only sit on if you're a guest or bought a day pass. For most of McCormick Ranch's history, that's been the deal. The neighborhood is built around water. Almost none of the restaurants are.
That's starting to change, and it's changing in two moves close enough together that they're worth reading as one story rather than two unrelated openings.
Forty-Some Years Of Lakes, Not Many Tables On Them
McCormick Ranch's lakes aren't a decorative afterthought. The McCormick Ranch Property Owners' Association manages the common areas that include the neighborhood's network of man-made lakes, and the paths that ring them connect straight into Scottsdale's Indian Bend Wash Greenbelt, giving residents miles of car-light walking and biking that mostly hugs water or golf turf. If you live here, that path is probably part of your week whether you golf or not.
What the neighborhood has never quite had is a restaurant built to face that water and open to whoever walks up. The closest thing is The McCormick Scottsdale, the resort on Camelback Lake that runs Piñon Grill for lakeside dining and rents kayaks and pedal boats off its private beach. It's real lakefront dining. It's also a hotel amenity, priced and gated like one. For the residents who bike past that same water every morning on their way to Mountain View Park or the railroad park, sitting down at a table on the lake has generally meant booking a room or buying a pass first.
Two things happening this year are the first real test of whether that changes for good.
What's Already Open: Starfish Landed On The Neighborhood's Edge
The first move already happened. On May 5, 2026, Starfish Scottsdale opened at the northwest corner of Hayden and Via de Ventura, in a space that had cycled through Agave del Scottsdale and then, briefly, Okay Maguey. It's the first restaurant Starfish Hospitality Group has opened outside California, run by husband-and-wife founders Gretchen and Archie McConnell, who built the brand's reputation at Starfish Laguna Beach and Starfish Newport Beach starting in 2011.
The menu leans coastal Asian across five countries of influence, with more than 70 shareable plates. A few specifics worth knowing before you go:
- Hours run 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday
- Happy hour is daily from 3 to 6 p.m., with more than 30 menu items starting at $13
- Signature dishes include the Lobster Macadamia Roll, Braised BBQ Pork Buns, Thai Curry Chicken, and Candy Dragon Prawns
- The space totals about 5,200 square feet, split between an indoor dining room and a patio built to seat around 90
Gretchen McConnell framed the move as a natural extension of an audience the group already had:
"So many of our guests split their time between Orange County and the Valley, so this expansion felt incredibly natural. We can't wait to meet our new neighbors in Scottsdale."
Starfish isn't lakefront. It's a road corner at the edge of the neighborhood. But it matters here for a different reason: it's proof a restaurant group with California-caliber standards will bet on McCormick Ranch as a destination in its own right, not just a drive-through on the way to Old Town. That bet is about to get a much bigger sibling.
What's Under Construction Right Now: Lakefront At Scottsdale
The second move is the one that actually puts tables on the water, and it's happening as you read this. Diversified Partners, the Scottsdale-based development firm led by founder and CEO Walt Brown Jr., is converting the roughly 100,000-square-foot Forever Corporate Plaza at 7501 E. McCormick Parkway into a mixed-use waterfront project called Lakefront at Scottsdale, designed around what Brown has described as a modern Santa Barbara look.
The building has belonged to Forever Living Products for nearly 30 years. As part of the deal, Forever Living is keeping its headquarters on-site even after selling the property, and Diversified Partners is giving a nod to that history by naming the development's valet drive Forever Lane.
The restaurant math is the part residents will feel most directly: four dining spaces are planned right on McCormick Lake, ranging from about 5,400 to 10,400 square feet, with three of them carrying patios in the 3,000-to-4,000-square-foot range facing the water. Around that, the retail mix is built more toward services than shopping, with plans for jewelry, a high-end salon, med spa uses, and wellness studios for yoga and pilates in suites from 1,200 to 5,500 square feet. Office space above and around it ranges from 940 up to 14,000 square feet.
Brown has said the goal is straightforward:
"We're building a place where people come to spend time, whether that's enjoying dinner on the waterfront, meeting colleagues for lunch or simply taking in the atmosphere."
Construction is happening in two phases. The first, focused on demolishing and rebuilding the restaurant and retail portions, was targeted to begin in the third quarter of 2026, which means it's underway now. The second phase, covering the remaining retail and office space, is expected to start in early 2027. Diversified Partners has said it's courting upscale restaurant operators for the four waterfront spaces, though as of this writing no specific tenants have been announced.
What This Actually Looks Like From The Path This Fall
If your regular loop takes you anywhere near McCormick Parkway east of Scottsdale Road, expect to see the visible signs of phase one over the next several months: site fencing, demolition equipment, and the slow disappearance of the office building's old footprint before anything resembling a restaurant patio takes shape. That's a normal part of a two-phase commercial build, not a sign of delay. The developer's own timeline puts the finished retail and dining pieces well ahead of the office portion, which isn't scheduled to start until 2027.
What makes this worth tracking isn't the square footage. It's what it does to a very specific daily-life gap. Right now, if you want to eat or have a drink actually facing one of McCormick Ranch's lakes, your options are Piñon Grill inside a resort, or nothing. Lakefront at Scottsdale is the first attempt in the neighborhood's history to put that experience outside the resort gate, on a shoreline residents already walk and bike past constantly. Whether it succeeds depends on which operators eventually sign those four leases, but the appetite question got a partial answer in May, when a restaurant group that could have opened anywhere in the Valley chose a corner of McCormick Ranch instead.
Put those two data points together and the read is less about one new restaurant and more about a neighborhood whose lakes are finally being treated as something other than scenery. For anyone who's biked that Greenbelt stretch a thousand times without ever having a reason to stop at the water's edge, that's the actual news here.
If you're curious what a project like this tends to do to interest in the homes closest to it, or you just want a local's read on how McCormick Ranch keeps evolving, Easy Living Arizona is always glad to talk it through, no obligation attached.
