When JING's leadership scouted the corner of Scottsdale Road and Shea Boulevard for the brand's first Arizona location, they weren't chasing tourists. Vice president Alex Kane told Phoenix New Times the pitch was aimed at people who live nearby and don't want the drive south. The idea was simple: give the surrounding neighborhoods "a high-end, upscale but approachable, energetic, fun place to hang out" without the trip to Old Town.
That's a specific bet, and it landed at a specific address. But it's not the only one. A few miles northwest, at the corner of Tatum Boulevard and Cactus Road, a much larger bet just closed too. Between February and April of this year, two of the biggest wagers on how people in this corridor spend an evening opened within weeks of each other. Neither is on Shea itself. Both are betting the same thing: that the people who live between them will stay close rather than drive to Kierland, Fashion Square, or Old Town.
What Actually Opened at the Corner
JING took over a former Jason's Deli at 10605 N. Scottsdale Road, at the northeast corner of Scottsdale and Shea, and spent $11 million turning it into something unrecognizable. The 10,000-square-foot space now runs on a Josper charcoal oven imported from Spain, a rare piece of equipment used by only a handful of Valley kitchens and the first one JING has installed at any of its locations, including the original outposts in Aspen, Denver, and Las Vegas.
The kitchen is led by corporate executive chef Thomas Griese, who has directed JING's food program since 2019 after training under Thomas Keller, André Rochat, and Michael Mina. The menu leans into sushi, Josper-grilled steaks like the Longbone Tomahawk, and a Peking duck that takes three days to prepare. It quietly opened in late December, then held its official debut in February.
None of that changes daily life on its own. What matters is the stated reason for building it here instead of five miles south. Kane's version, on the record: people in the surrounding neighborhoods wanted an upscale night out without making the trip to Old Town, so JING built one at the intersection instead.
A Bigger Bet Closed a Few Minutes Northwest
The second bet is harder to miss, because it's bigger by an order of magnitude. The former Paradise Valley Mall site, now simply called PV, sits at Tatum Boulevard and Cactus Road on more than 100 acres that RED Development is turning into a $2 billion mixed-use district. On April 30, Life Time opened a 91,000-square-foot athletic country club there, its ninth in Arizona and its first north of Cactus Road along this stretch. The club includes seven pickleball courts, a rooftop pool deck with room for 300, and recovery amenities like cryotherapy and compression lounges. An 11-story, 327-unit residential tower called Life Time Living is rising next door, connected to the club by a pedestrian bridge, with a shared 1.5-acre rooftop deck planned between the two buildings when it's finished in 2027.
The dining lineup filling in around the club reads like a list of Valley favorites making their first move outside familiar territory. Cala, the coastal European restaurant chef Beau MacMillan opened in Old Town in 2022 at Senna House Hotel, is building a second location here. Harry & Izzy's, the steakhouse sibling of Indianapolis's St. Elmo Steak House, is opening its first restaurant outside the Midwest in a standalone 8,300-square-foot building. Velvet Taco, Federal Pizza's second location from Upward Projects, and Wren House Brewing Co. are already open or under construction alongside a Whole Foods Market, Blanco Reserva Cocina + Cantina, Flower Child, Sephora, and Trevor's Liquor.
That Whole Foods is worth pausing on. It didn't open new at PV. It moved there from the corner of Tatum and Shea, close enough to walk to the intersection where JING now sits. A grocery store that anchored the corridor for years picked up and relocated a few miles northwest to be inside the new development instead of adjacent to it.
Two Anchors, Not a Wave
Line up the geography and a pattern shows up that a simple list of openings would miss. The growth isn't spreading evenly across Shea Boulevard. It's concentrating at two points that bookend the corridor: the Scottsdale Road and Shea intersection on one side, and Tatum and Cactus a few minutes northwest on the other. RED Development's own framing of PV backs this up. The company has described the project's central park as the pedestrian core meant to become, in the words of RED executive Jeff Moloznik, the property's community gathering spot once the second phase is finished.
Two developers, working independently, made the same underlying bet: that people already living in this stretch have the appetite and the income for a high-end night out, but not necessarily the patience for a twenty-minute drive to get one. JING built for that bet at one end. Life Time and RED are building for it at the other, at a scale meant to eventually match the combined footprint of Scottsdale Quarter and Kierland Commons, according to reporting from Arizona's Family. Whole Foods packing up and moving from Tatum and Shea to PV is the clearest evidence the bet is already paying off. A business that had years of foot traffic at its old corner decided the new one was worth the move.
What This Changes for an Actual Weeknight
If you already live between these two points, the practical shift is less about ribbon-cuttings and more about what's now within a short drive instead of a longer one.
- A reservation at JING gets you a happy hour running 3 to 6 p.m. daily, with weeknight DJ programming starting at 7 and weekend sets from 8, according to the restaurant's own hours listed on Yelp and its website.
- Pickleball no longer means driving across town. Life Time Paradise Valley's seven courts, three indoor and four outdoor, sit inside a club open as early as 4 a.m. on weekdays.
- The Cala and Harry & Izzy's openings later this year add two more sit-down options at PV without a trip to Old Town or downtown Indianapolis's original St. Elmo's, for that matter.
- Grocery runs shift too. Whole Foods is no longer at Tatum and Shea. It's a few minutes further northwest, inside the new development.
None of this required anyone to move. It required two companies to bet that the neighborhood's evenings were worth building for, and both bets closed within about ten weeks of each other this year.
Old Town is still there, and so is Kierland. What's different now is that a Tuesday night doesn't have to end at either one. It can end at the corner where a former sandwich shop became a $11 million dining room, or a few minutes past it, where the former Paradise Valley Mall site is becoming a walkable district of restaurants, a park, and a new athletic club.
If you're weighing what a home along this corridor is actually worth now that the corner has changed, Jaime Fernandez can walk you through it street by street.
