When restaurateurs Rick Phillips and Peter Hearn announced Camello, the Mexican restaurant and lounge that opened February 2 at The Esplanade, they framed it as their entry into what they called "the renewed energy of the Camelback Corridor," pointing to their own Little Pickle and The Mercer alongside neighbors Global Ambassador and Steak 44. Read on its own, that's standard opening-day marketing language. Read against what happened nine days later, directly across Camelback Road at Biltmore Fashion Park, it reads differently.
On February 11, Saks Fifth Avenue confirmed it would close its Biltmore store, the anchor that had defined the center's south end since 1995. The closure came out of Saks Global's Chapter 11 filing that January, part of a wave that took down eight Saks Fifth Avenue locations nationally. The Biltmore store was roughly 92,000 square feet. Sixty-seven employees lost their jobs. For a neighborhood that has measured its own status by that Saks nameplate for three decades, watching it go dark is the kind of thing that gets noticed on every dog walk past the center.
Here's the part that doesn't fit the obvious story: the same months that closed one of the neighborhood's oldest anchors were the months that filled in almost everything else around it.
What 92,000 Square Feet of Vacancy Actually Signals
A dark anchor store usually reads as decline. Commercial real estate has a specific reason that fear exists: many shopping center leases include co-tenancy clauses that let smaller tenants renegotiate rent, or walk, if an anchor closes and foot traffic drops. That's the mechanism landlords worry about when a Saks or a Macy's goes dark.
It's also why the CoStar reporting on the Saks Global closures is worth sitting with. Rudy Milian, a retail consultant who heads Woodcliff Realty Advisors, singled out Biltmore Fashion Park as one of only two properties nationally, alongside Fashion Show in Las Vegas, positioned to re-lease its vacated Saks space at much higher rents per square foot than it was collecting before. Most malls losing a Saks are bracing for a hole. Biltmore's ownership is treating the same vacancy as a chance to reset the lease roll at a stronger number, because the Camelback Corridor's office towers, hotels, and Life Time's daily foot traffic give the property a customer base most retail-only centers don't have.
That distinction matters if you live within walking distance. It means the empty storefront at the center of your errands isn't a symptom. It's a landlord holding out for a better tenant while everything else on the property keeps moving, which is also why RED Development has converted a former retail building above The Capital Grille and Ralph Lauren into Class A office space, filling it completely this year with tenants VanTrust and Phoenix Design One, with landscaping and lighting upgrades planned for completion later in 2026.
The Tenant Roster Filling In Around the Gap
RED Development, which took full ownership of Biltmore Fashion Park in 2024, has been announcing new leases in waves since last year. Here's where each piece of the current build-out stands:
| Tenant | Category | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Herman Miller | Design showroom, Aeron Chair flagship | Opened late February 2026, first Arizona location |
| [solidcore] | Fitness studio near Alo | Targeted spring 2026 opening |
| FP Movement | Activewear, between Rye 51 and Warby Parker | Targeted spring 2026 opening |
| Alo Yoga | Apparel, former My Sister's Closet space | Expected to open by end of 2026 |
| La La Land Kind Café | Coffee, near True Food Kitchen | Expected to open by end of 2026, Phoenix debut |
| Biltmore Fine Art | Pop-up gallery led by Robert Casterline of Casterline | Goodman Gallery |
Herman Miller's arrival is worth pausing on. It's the brand's first Arizona location, a 2,060-square-foot showroom next to Ralph Lauren built around the Aeron Chair, and it's the kind of tenant that doesn't need mall foot traffic the way a clothing retailer does. Design showrooms follow demographics, not vacancy rates. Its presence at Biltmore is a bet on the neighborhood, not just the shopping center.
The Event Calendar That Filled In Faster Than the Storefronts
While leasing plays out over months, the property's events calendar moved faster. If you've been to the center recently, some of this is probably already familiar:
- Art Walk at Biltmore Fashion Park, a free Sunday afternoon series with Axiom Contemporary Gallery and Artlink, launched its inaugural date March 15 with rotating exhibitions by Arizona artists.
- The Arizona WineGrowers Festival brought more than 40 Arizona wineries to the center on March 28.
- Midweek Miles, a free weekly community run with the Phoenix Run Club, happens every Wednesday at 6:30 p.m.
- Sip & Shop now lets visitors carry a drink while browsing the outdoor center.
- Global Running Day, organized with lululemon and local run clubs, drew nearly 1,000 participants.
- The 50th annual Phoenix Marathon, Half, 10K, and 5K will start and finish at Biltmore Fashion Park on November 9.
- The Art d'Core Gala, hosted by Artlink Inc., returns to the property this year.
None of this required a leasing decision. A property that was genuinely struggling doesn't layer on a weekly run club and a recurring gallery series while its anchor sits empty. It builds a reason to keep showing up while the retail mix sorts itself out.
The Other Half of the Story Is Across Camelback Road
Biltmore Fashion Park isn't the only property rewriting itself right now. The Esplanade, directly across Camelback Road, has spent the past year building out its own dining identity under 151 Hospitality, the group Phillips and Hearn formed after their MercBar days. Little Pickle Jewish Deli came back first, followed by The Mercer, and then Camello, which opened for dinner service February 2 and added lunch a week later.
Camello is the flagship of the three, a 6,000-square-foot space with room for 150 guests, run by executive chef Julio Mata, who started at the well-regarded Barrio Café before leading every Barrio Queen opening. The menu leans into tlayudas made with Oaxacan tortillas, a tableside ceviche cart, and a 48-ounce carne asada tomahawk ribeye built for sharing. It sits a few doors from Global Ambassador and Steak 44, two restaurants that have anchored the corridor's evening scene for years.
Put the two properties side by side and the pattern gets clearer. Biltmore Fashion Park is losing a department store anchor and replacing it with design, wellness, and recurring cultural programming. The Esplanade is layering in restaurant after restaurant from operators who already work in the neighborhood. Neither transition depends on the other, but they're happening on the same two blocks in the same calendar year, and they're both aimed at giving the corridor more reasons to be there on a Tuesday night, not just a Saturday afternoon.
What the Condo Approval Says About Who's Betting on This
There's one more data point worth knowing if you live nearby. In February 2026, Phoenix City Council unanimously approved a luxury condominium project from JDM Partners at 2400 E. Arizona Biltmore Circle, near the Arizona Biltmore hotel and the Wrigley Mansion. Jerry Colangelo, a partner in the project, worked through opposition from the neighboring Best Western before the council vote, ultimately trimming the unit count and office square footage to address concerns.
A developer doesn't put residential density a few blocks from a mall with a dark anchor unless they read the surrounding retail and dining activity as durable. The timing lines up with everything else in this piece. Nobody involved, not RED Development, not 151 Hospitality, not JDM Partners, is treating the Saks vacancy as the end of something. Each of them is treating it as one closed door in a corridor that's opening several others at the same time.
That's the actual story here. Not that Biltmore lost an anchor, and not that a few new restaurants opened nearby. It's that the neighborhood's two flagship commercial properties are being reworked in the same window, by different developers, for different reasons, and the net effect is a corridor with more going on this August than it had a year ago, even with a 92,000-square-foot hole in the middle of it.
If you're curious what any of this means for property values or timing a move in the Biltmore neighborhood, that's a different conversation, and one we're glad to have. Gregory Hidder + TEAM works this corridor closely and can walk you through what these changes are doing to the market in real terms. Request a private consultation whenever you're ready.
