What it is
Biltmore Fashion Park is a 1963 open-air mall on 31 acres at the northwest corner of 24th Street and Camelback Road, about 611,000 square feet of stores arranged around lawns, fountains and mature trees. It was designed by Welton Becket and Associates, the Los Angeles firm behind the Capitol Records building, and it opened with I. Magnin of San Francisco and Saks Fifth Avenue as anchors at a time when this corner was the edge of town and the Arizona Biltmore up the road was the only reason anyone drove this far north. It was the first luxury shopping center in Phoenix, and it set the template that Kierland Commons and the rest of Scottsdale’s open-air centers would copy forty years later.
Today the department store is Macy’s, which started life here as the Broadway in 1968. Saks moved into the bigger I. Magnin building in 1995 and announced in early 2026 that the store would close, which leaves Macy’s and a large Life Time club as the anchors and about fifty stores and restaurants between them: Anthropologie, lululemon, J.Crew, Ralph Lauren, Pottery Barn, Williams Sonoma, Sephora, Tumi, Arhaus. The restaurant row along Camelback is the center’s real strength, with True Food Kitchen, the 2008 original of the chain, The Capital Grille, Blanco Cocina + Cantina, Pomo Pizzeria, Zinburger, The Breakfast Club and The Cheesecake Factory.
Why leave Scottsdale for it
Not for the shopping alone; Scottsdale Fashion Square has more of everything. Come because the Biltmore is the nicest neighborhood in Phoenix to spend an afternoon in, and this is its town square: lunch on a patio, a walk under the trees, the Biltmore hotel and the Wrigley Mansion two minutes north for the rest of the day.
The practical version
Seventeen minutes from Old Town, west on Camelback. Free parking in the lots on the Camelback and 24th Street sides. Stores open around ten and close around eight; the restaurants go later. Two hours covers lunch and a loop.
When to go
Weekday lunch is the mall’s natural hour: the Camelback corridor office towers across the street empty into the restaurants between noon and one, and the lawns are busy with people who work in the neighborhood. Come at 1:30 and you get the tables. Winter weekends are pleasant and crowded; the holiday season brings lights on the big trees and a real crowd. Summer is quiet and hot; the misters on the patios run, the stores are empty, and True Food’s breakfast or an early dinner are the sane hours.
What to do
- Eat. This is a restaurant center with stores attached. True Food Kitchen for the healthy-leaning lunch and the best patio; The Capital Grille for a steak lunch at the bar; Blanco for margaritas; Pomo for a pizza; The Breakfast Club for a late brunch; Frost for gelato on the walk back to the car.
- Walk the gardens. The center lawn, the fountains and the shaded walks are what Becket designed and what survived every renovation. Our shopping note describes the Scottsdale centers that imitated them.
- Macy’s and the row. Browse the home stores (Pottery Barn, Williams Sonoma, Arhaus) in one run; they cluster.
- Life Time. The club is members-only, but its rooftop beach club and the sushi bar inside hint at where the center is going.
- Cross to the Esplanade. The office-and-hotel complex on the south side of Camelback has its own restaurants; the whole 24th Street intersection works as one district.
With kids
Fine for a stroller lunch, with lawns to run on and gelato at the end. There is no play area to speak of; this is an adults’ mall. If the kids need an afternoon, the Phoenix Mountains Preserve trailheads are ten minutes north.
The story
In 1963 Phoenix’s department stores were downtown and the city’s money was moving north along Central and Camelback. Biltmore Fashion Park bet that the money would stop at 24th Street, next to the resort that had given the neighborhood its name, and built the first shopping center in Arizona aimed squarely at it: a garden mall, open to the sky, with an I. Magnin for the San Francisco set and a Saks for the New York one. The Gittings portrait studio inside photographed John Wayne and Bob Hope. The Broadway arrived in 1968, Neiman Marcus tried a small-format concept here that lasted two years, and for three decades the center was simply where well-off Phoenix shopped.
Ownership turned over as the mall business consolidated. Taubman bought it in the mid-1990s for $115 million; Westcor, the Scottsdale-based developer of Fashion Square and Kierland, took it in the early 2000s and spent on a 2002 renovation and a $30 million round in 2005 that turned over a third of the tenants and built the restaurant row. Macerich inherited it with Westcor and sold its half to its partner RED Development in July 2024 for about $110 million. RED has talked about a tower on the site, and in February 2026 Saks said it would close the Biltmore store as part of a national round of closures, ending an anchor run that began on opening day in 1963.
The Scottsdale connection
Westcor ran this center and Scottsdale Fashion Square at the same time, and Biltmore was the model for the open-air centers it built later in Scottsdale, Kierland Commons above all. Sam Fox, the Scottsdale restaurateur whose Fox Restaurant Concepts now fills half the city’s patios, opened True Food Kitchen here in 2008 and Blanco later; the Biltmore was his proving ground before the chains went national. The Camelback corridor resorts send guests here as the “nice mall” when Fashion Square feels like too much.
Getting there
Camelback Road west from Scottsdale Road, six miles, to 24th Street; the mall is on the right, with entrances from both Camelback and 24th. Parking is free and plentiful on weekdays, tight at holiday lunch. The Arizona Biltmore is a half mile north on 24th; the Wrigley Mansion is up the hill behind it.