The McCormick Ranch Lake Edge Is Being Rebuilt Around You in 2026
August 6, 2026
August 6, 2026
For fifty years, the seven lakes at the center of McCormick Ranch have been something you looked at. From a patio. From the cart path on the Palm or Pine course. From a bench along the Greenbelt on the way to the Railroad Park. The water was the amenity, not the address. In 2026, that is changing on four separate parcels at once, and the change is close enough to your daily loop that it is worth understanding before the first shovel breaks ground.
The working thesis of this piece: the lake is being promoted from backdrop to front door. Four projects, three of them within a mile of each other, are turning the shoreline into the neighborhood's primary gathering surface.
The property most locals know as Forever Corporate Plaza, the 100,000-square-foot office building that has quietly held down the shoreline near McCormick Parkway for nearly three decades, is on its way to becoming something different. Scottsdale-based Diversified Partners plans to turn the McCormick Ranch office structure with lakeside views into an upscale development with restaurants, boutiques, and Class A offices, calling it Lakefront at Scottsdale, with a design inspired by "modern Santa Barbara," and is acquiring the site from Forever Living Products, which has owned the building for nearly 30 years.
The scale is what a neighbor should read carefully. Four waterfront dining spaces are planned right on the lake, with footprints ranging from roughly 5,400 to 10,400 square feet, and three of them add large patios sized around 3,000 to 4,000 square feet. That is more purpose-built lakefront patio square footage than the corridor has ever carried. The eastern lakefront edge will carry the retail pulse, with a merchandising plan that reads like a lifestyle strip aimed at the McCormick Ranch customer, including jewelry, a high-end salon, med spa uses, wellness studios, yoga, pilates, and boutique retail suites from 1,200 to 5,500 square feet.
Groundbreaking is currently targeted for June 2026. For anyone who walks the path along the north shore, expect leasing announcements and design review filings through the summer before any dirt moves. The building's current tenant is staying. Forever Living Products will continue to operate its headquarters in the building after the acquisition.
A short walk south, the second piece of the reset is already under contract with different owners. The lakefront pad that housed Chart House since 1984 sat empty after the restaurant permanently closed. It has now been picked up by Prime Steak Concepts, the group behind the Mastro name in Scottsdale, and the plan is not a remodel.
Chart House, a longtime Scottsdale staple since 1984, has permanently closed, and Jeff Mastro said in a statement that he and his brother Mike grew up just a few blocks away in McCormick Ranch, calling it the perfect place to do something special that fits the location. The former Chart House site is being rebuilt into a 12,000 to 14,000 square foot steakhouse with a June 2027 target.
Two data points read together explain why this matters more than a single restaurant opening. Put the Mastro project next to Lakefront at Scottsdale and you have five new lakefront restaurants, all sized for destination dinners, planned inside the same walkable stretch. McCormick Ranch has had the rooftops, the golf, the lakes, and the money for years, yet true upscale waterfront restaurant space has stayed thin. That gap is exactly what this redevelopment aims to hit.
The first of the new waterfront tenants is already pouring drinks. Starfish Scottsdale opened in early 2026, marking Starfish Hospitality Group's first restaurant outside California. The Scottsdale restaurant spans approximately 5,200 square feet, with 3,800 square feet indoors and a 1,400-square-foot patio, redesigned to reflect the brand's signature aesthetic with lush tropical fabrics, custom booth seating, and artwork inspired by the coastal regions of Southeast Asia.
For a resident, the useful specifics are the menu bets and the ownership signal. Signature dishes planned for the Scottsdale location include Thai spicy beef with basil, a lobster macadamia nut sushi roll made with lobster tail, mango, cucumber, and house-made aioli, and Chilean sea bass wrapped in banana leaf paired with Thai basil green curry and garlic green beans. A California group choosing McCormick Ranch for its first out-of-state room, before Lakefront at Scottsdale is even under construction, is the clearest tell that operators are reading the corridor the way Diversified is: as a destination waiting for tenants, not a suburban node still to be proven.
The fourth piece of the shift is the anchor everyone already knows. The Scottsdale Resort at McCormick Ranch, which sits on the same lake system, has been through a top-to-bottom renovation designed by PHX Architecture with SB Design on interiors and Greey-Pickett on landscape.
The renovation includes upgrades to the entry drive landscaping and event lawn features, courtyard and guest amenities, a new lobby bar, and a new restaurant featuring a display kitchen, along with renovations to the guestrooms. A complete removal of the entire existing pool and pool patio was replaced with a new pool and pool patio, a new outdoor pool bar with bar-height seating, bistro lighting, and TVs, and the new pool features a dynamically lit pool trellis with a pedestrian bridge spanning over the pool with a water feature.
Reading the resort's move in the same frame as Lakefront at Scottsdale and the Mastro project, the pattern gets easier to name. The three biggest lakefront parcels in the community are being redesigned for outdoor evening use at almost the same moment.
None of this is arriving in a neighborhood that lacked reasons to be outside. The 2026 slate at McCormick-Stillman Railroad Park is a fair reminder of what daily life already looks like inside the ranch:
And the physical framework the new development is plugging into: two championship 18-hole golf courses at McCormick Ranch Golf Club's Palm and Pine courses, more than 25 miles of bicycle paths, parks, public tennis courts, and 130 acres of man-made lakes across seven lakes, all threaded to Scottsdale's Indian Bend Wash Greenbelt, an 11-mile linear park that runs through the center of the city.
For household planning purposes, the MRPOA has also set its 2026 numbers. The 2026 residential annual assessment rate is $265, with statements mailed on January 9, 2026 and due on February 13.
Three things follow from what is on the calendar.
First, the path system is about to do more work. If you already walk or ride the Greenbelt spurs into the ranch, the new destinations are on your existing lines. A weeknight walk to dinner is a realistic pattern for the first time in the neighborhood's history, not a stretch.
Second, the density of what is coming is unusual. Five new lakefront restaurants, plus a rebuilt resort pool and lobby, plus a wellness-heavy retail row, inside roughly a mile of shoreline, is the kind of concentration Scottsdale has typically reserved for Old Town and the Waterfront. Diversified's leasing strategy points at upscale operators and possible international names, chasing destination traffic, and if it lands the right operators, this stretch could shift into one of the stronger evening draws in the Valley, with the lake finally becoming the attraction instead of the backdrop.
Third, the calendar is worth watching. Starfish is open now. Lakefront at Scottsdale breaks ground in June 2026. The Mastro steakhouse targets June 2027. The renovated Scottsdale Resort has already delivered its new pool and bar. If you are a homeowner near the north or east shore, the twelve to eighteen months ahead are the window in which the neighborhood's evening character resets.
That is a small handful of facts to hold in your head as you look at your lake from a familiar angle this fall. The view is not changing. What sits at the edge of it is.
If you would like a considered read on what this evolution means for values on specific streets around the lakes, or you want a quiet conversation about listing timing before the corridor fully reveals its new face, Sue Shapiro is here when you are ready. Let's Connect.
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