Everyone tracking change in the Biltmore this year has been watching the wrong side of Camelback Road.
In February, Saks Fifth Avenue confirmed it would close its Biltmore Fashion Park store as part of a wind-down of eight locations nationwide, the same month RED Development was signing leases with a furniture showroom and a boutique fitness studio to fill space once occupied by traditional retail. That's the version of the story most people caught: a mall losing a marquee name while replacing it with something less glamorous. But walk two hundred feet across Camelback Road to The Esplanade, and you'll find the opposite problem. A property that had one restaurant worth naming three years ago now has three, all built by the same local group, all timed to open one after another like they were planned that way. Because they were.
The Camelback Corridor isn't shrinking. It's specializing. The mall is becoming the place you run errands and take a class. The Esplanade is becoming the place you go after five. If you live between 24th and 32nd Streets, that split is already showing up in how you spend your evenings, whether you've named it or not.
The Mall Is Trading Department Stores for Errands and Endorphins
Biltmore Fashion Park opened in 1963 anchored by I. Magnin and Saks Fifth Avenue, joined by The Broadway in 1968. For six decades the formula was department stores plus a handful of restaurants. That formula is now visibly breaking.
Saks' closure leaves Macy's as the property's remaining traditional anchor, alongside Life Time, which still draws daily foot traffic through its fitness club and rooftop beach club regardless of what's happening in the rest of the center. What's filling in around them tells you where the leasing strategy is actually headed:
| New at Biltmore Fashion Park | Category | Status as of September 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Herman Miller | Design and furniture showroom | Open since late February, next to Ralph Lauren |
| FP Movement | Activewear (URBN portfolio) | Open, between Rye 51 and Warby Parker |
| solidcore | Boutique strength studio | Open, near Alo |
| Alo Yoga | Athletic apparel | Expected by year's end, in the former My Sister's Closet space |
| La La Land Kind Café | Coffee and casual bites | Expected later this year, near True Food Kitchen |
| Saks Fifth Avenue | Department store | Closing, part of a nationwide reduction announced in February |
None of that reads like a mall in decline. It reads like a mall that decided its next customer isn't there to buy a dress, they're there to pick up a chair, grab a smoothie between a solidcore class and a work call, or browse the Aeron chair display on their way to Life Time. Industry analysts who cover the broader Saks closures singled out Biltmore Fashion Park as one of the few properties expected to backfill that vacancy at higher rents rather than struggle with it, which lines up with what's actually moving in. This is a Class A center trading one kind of shopper for another, not losing shoppers altogether.
Across the Street, One Operator Built an Entire Night Out
The Esplanade's transformation has been quieter but more complete. It started with a pop-up. Rick Phillips ran Little Pickle Jewish Deli as a temporary storefront from December 2022 through April 2023, testing whether a pastrami sandwich and New York bagels had a following in the Biltmore. They did. Little Pickle came back for good in 2025, alongside a martini lounge called The Mercer from the same team, Phillips and his partner Peter Hearn, operating as 151 Hospitality.
Then in February 2026, the group opened Camello, the flagship of the three. It's a 6,000 square foot Mexican restaurant and lounge named for its Camelback Mountain views, built around chef Julio Mata, who trained at Barrio Café and opened every Barrio Queen location before landing here. The space runs a full day: a relaxed lunch of tacos and bowls for the office crowd, a more formal dinner service, then a late night lounge with a dance floor and a curated Latin playlist. It opened for dinner February 2 and added lunch a week later, part of a renovation the group has described as roughly $50 million.
What makes this different from a typical restaurant opening is the intent behind the sequencing. Phillips and Hearn were explicit about it:
"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."
That's not a single restaurant hoping to catch foot traffic. That's an operator who watched a corridor gain momentum and built three concepts in three years to occupy different parts of the day inside it: breakfast and lunch at Little Pickle, cocktails at The Mercer, dinner through last call at Camello.
The Office Building Nobody Noticed Is Becoming a Restaurant Too
The pattern isn't contained to The Esplanade. A block away, at the corner of Camelback Road and 31st Street, a Canadian restaurant group has proposed converting part of a 1980s-era office building into an 8,736 square foot restaurant with a 1,563 square foot patio, under the name Joey Biltmore. The filing describes the goal plainly: removing outdated office space from the corridor and replacing it with a full sit-down restaurant.
That's the same conversion logic playing out at The Esplanade, just smaller and one street over. Office space that used to define this stretch of Camelback is giving way to places built for people to sit down and stay a while. Three separate projects, three separate developers, one direction.
What This Actually Looks Like on the Ground Right Now
None of this is theoretical if you're already living here. As of this month, Biltmore Fashion Park is running a "Sip & Shop" series letting shoppers carry a drink while browsing the center, True Food Kitchen just rolled out its Peak Season Menu, and solidcore is hosting an in-studio pop-up with Nektar this Saturday morning. The Arhaus showroom is mid-storewide sale. None of it is dramatic on its own. Together it's a center that has settled into a rhythm built around errands, wellness, and grazing rather than department store browsing.
The fitness and errand identity has a bigger annual marker too. Last November, Biltmore Fashion Park served as the start and finish line for the Phoenix Marathon's 10K, 5K, half, and full marathon races, marking that event's 50th year. If you live nearby, that's the kind of closure and foot traffic worth planning around when it returns to the calendar again.
Meanwhile, if you're deciding where to eat tonight, the split described here holds up as a rule of thumb. Daytime and quick trips still belong to the Fashion Park side of Camelback. Evening plans, especially anything with a reservation attached, now lean toward the Esplanade side, where Camello, The Mercer, and Little Pickle give you three different moods without moving your car.
The Corridor Isn't One Neighborhood Anymore, It's Two Shifts
The easy read on 2026 in the Biltmore is "a lot changed." The more useful read is that it changed in two different directions on either side of the same road, and both directions make sense once you see them as specialization rather than decline. The mall didn't lose its identity when Saks left. It found a new one built around fitness, design, and daytime convenience. The Esplanade didn't happen to get lucky with three good restaurants. It was built, on purpose, by people who bet on this stretch of Camelback before anyone else did.
If you've lived near 24th and Camelback for years, you already know this corridor rewards paying attention. The Caniglia Group works this stretch of Phoenix daily, from the Biltmore through Arcadia and into the historic districts further west, and we like nothing more than talking through what's actually changing on the ground versus what just sounds like it is. If you're weighing what a move within this corridor, or into it, might look like, The Caniglia Group is glad to walk through it with you. Schedule a Free Consultation whenever you're ready to talk specifics.
