"We're building more than a restaurant."
Sheila Bryson said that about Alma's move north, and by the time construction wraps this fall, that sentence will describe three separate properties along Scottsdale Road, not just her own. Drive north from Loop 101 toward Pinnacle Peak Road this season and you will pass a shuttered steakhouse becoming a four-in-one hospitality compound, a vacant pad that is now a ground-up restaurant with a walk-up coffee counter, and a shopping center that quietly filled its last empty storefronts with concepts that did not exist here a year ago. None of the three is trying to be Old Town.
Old Town keeps doing what Old Town does. BOA Steakhouse is settling into the Scottsdale Waterfront, and Din Tai Fung drew waitlisted crowds when it opened at Scottsdale Fashion Square this spring. That is destination dining: the kind of night out worth driving down for, once, for something specific. What is happening between Loop 101 and Pinnacle Peak is a different bet entirely, and if you live in 85255 or 85262, it changes how you plan an ordinary week.
The corner that explains the whole shift
The clearest example sits at 8700 E. Pinnacle Peak Road, the address that spent more than a decade as Preston's Steakhouse before it closed last year. Preston's cited the condition of the building and the cost of repairs. What is replacing it is not a like-for-like swap.
Alma Scottsdale, part of Sheila Bryson's Soul Hospitality Group, is relocating there under the name The Citadel, and it is targeting an October 1 opening, though Bryson has said the date could slide into early November depending on how construction goes. The new Alma is a Southwest steakhouse built around wood-fired cooking and flavors pulled from Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and Northern Mexico. That part sounds like a normal restaurant. The rest of the property does not: a rooftop lounge called Copper Club with live music and desert views, a tequila and mezcal bar serving tastings alongside tacos, and the return of Barbwire Western Couture, the western boutique Bryson used to operate, selling clothing, jewelry, boots, and hats inside the same building.
The mechanic is the interesting part. Guests can order off Alma's full menu whether they are seated in the steakhouse, standing at the rooftop bar, or browsing the boutique. A meal at Preston's meant picking one table and settling in for a full sit-down dinner. At Alma, you can stop in for a single cocktail on the roof, wander down for tacos at the mezcal bar, and leave with a new hat from Barbwire, none of which requires booking the dining room. That flexibility is what lets the same building host a Tuesday happy hour and a Saturday date night without either one feeling like the wrong occasion for the space.
| The Preston's era | Alma at The Citadel | |
|---|---|---|
| Built for | One occasion | Repeat visits, different reasons |
| Typical commitment | A two-hour dinner | A drink, a taco, or a full night |
| Draws from | Special-occasion diners | Residents nearby who decide on a whim |
A coffee bar that doesn't need a reservation
A few miles south, at the corner of Loop 101 and Scottsdale Road, Fox Restaurant Concepts opened The Henry on March 18, 2026, on a lot that sat vacant for a while before this ground-up build went in. The 7,000-square-foot space is designed for indoor-outdoor dining, with a front patio anchored by a fireplace, an open kitchen, and an interior courtyard. Fox founder Sam Fox has run The Henry as a brunch-and-dinner brand at his Arcadia and Uptown Phoenix locations for years. This one adds something those did not have: a walk-up coffee bar.
That single detail is the one worth noticing if you live nearby. A weekend brunch reservation is a planned event. A walk-up coffee counter is a habit, the kind of stop you make on a Tuesday morning on your way to somewhere else, no booking required. If you have been making the drive down to Arcadia or Uptown Phoenix for a Henry coffee, this location is close enough to absorb that trip without the traffic.
Sonora Village stops accepting tenants and starts choosing them
The third piece of the story is quieter and shows up in a number rather than a headline. Sonora Village, the shopping center at Hayden Road and Frank Lloyd Wright Boulevard, added four tenants earlier this year. Two of them are restaurants worth putting into rotation: Akamaru Japanese Restaurant, run by Chef Hiro, which serves onigirazu rice sandwiches and donburi bowls at lunch and turns into a full izakaya at night with sashimi and tempura, and bb.q Chicken, the Korean fried chicken chain that Yelp ranked seventh among the fastest-growing restaurant brands in 2025.
With those additions, Sonora Village reached 93 percent occupancy. Compare that to a typical suburban power center sitting at a secondary freeway intersection, where a handful of empty pads is normal turnover, and the number reads differently. Almost nothing is sitting open. That kind of near-full center usually means the property owner has enough demand to be picky about who signs a lease, rather than filling space with whoever calls first. YAM Properties director Marta Kenny described the goal as building a tenant mix that reflects the interests of the surrounding community, and a Japanese lunch counter opening next to a Korean fried chicken shop is a concrete example of what that selectivity produces on the ground.
What this actually changes if you already live here
None of this is about whether North Scottsdale is a place worth moving to. It already has plenty of people who live here and need to figure out where to go on an ordinary Tuesday, a Saturday afternoon, or the Friday night your brother and his wife show up for a visit. A few practical notes for building the fall into your routine:
- If out-of-town family is coming for the holidays, Alma's rooftop Copper Club is worth booking the moment the October date firms up, since a property built for repeat visits will likely fill fast once word gets around.
- The Henry's walk-up coffee bar does not require a reservation, which makes it a reasonable stand-in for the drive to Uptown Phoenix or Arcadia if that has become part of your weekly routine.
- Sonora Village now covers lunch, dinner, and a late-night izakaya run within the same parking lot, which is worth knowing the next time you cannot decide where to go and do not want to drive far.
The pattern across all three properties is the same. None of them are asking for a once-a-quarter special occasion. They are asking to be part of your week, which is a different kind of investment in a neighborhood than another steakhouse opening downtown ever was.
If you are watching how a neighborhood evolves, from the businesses that move in to the way property owners think about who gets a lease, that is the same lens worth applying to the housing stock nearby. John Rowan has spent more than 25 years tracking how these shifts play out across Peoria, Scottsdale, and the wider Phoenix metro, both for people planning to stay and for those weighing a move. If you want a local read on what a changing corridor means for property values nearby, or you're simply curious what's next for this part of Scottsdale, Let's Connect.
