"It's been a bloodbath." That's how one Old Town gallery owner summed up this past summer to the East Valley Tribune, describing a stretch of Scottsdale Road where storefronts sat dark longer than anyone could remember. Longtime business owner Paul Mitchell called it probably his worst summer ever. Gallery owner Bob Pejman went further, calling the closures "a canary in the coal mine" for a downtown he worried was losing its pulse.
Two addresses did most of the work in that story: the building that used to hold RnR Gastropub, and the one that used to hold STK. Both sat empty at the same time this summer, both got named specifically in coverage of Old Town's vacancy problem, and both looked like proof that the district was hollowing out. But if you trace what actually happened to each building, the picture that emerges isn't decline. It's a timing gap between two different closures that got told as the same story, when one of them was already resolved months before anyone wrote about it.
The Two Addresses Everyone Pointed To
RnR Gastropub ran for 15 years at 3737 N. Scottsdale Road, known for what its own marketing called the only two-story dining patio overlooking the street. It closed in June 2025, part of a broader pullback by its parent company, Evening Entertainment Group, which had already shuttered Chauncey Social in north Scottsdale that April, according to Phoenix New Times.
STK Scottsdale closed its original two-story restaurant at 7134 E. Stetson Drive that same year. The building had anchored the Southbridge stretch of the Scottsdale Waterfront since 2021, added a rooftop bar in 2023, and by the summer of 2025 was gone, too.
By August 2026, when the Tribune published its piece on Old Town's summer slump, both buildings were still being cited as evidence of the district's trouble. One of them deserved that reputation. The other had already moved on.
What Happened to Each Building, Side by Side
| Address | What Closed | What's There Now | Status as of September 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3737 N. Scottsdale Rd | RnR Gastropub (2010 to June 2025) | General Admission, a sports-viewing gastropub | Opening this fall |
| 7134 E. Stetson Dr | STK Scottsdale (2021 to summer 2025) | BOA Steakhouse, with a rooftop concept called Above All Else | Slated for 2026 |
| Scottsdale Rd & 1st St, former RA Sushi space | — | STK Scottsdale, relocated | Reopened November 2025 |
The gap between the two original closures and their replacements is not the same length, and that difference is the whole story.
STK Never Actually Left
STK didn't disappear when it closed at Stetson Drive. It relocated a few blocks away into the former RA Sushi space at the southeast corner of Scottsdale Road and First Street and reopened in November 2025, according to Fabulous Arizona. The new location came back bigger, with an intimate dining room, purple accent lighting, white leather booths, and a nightly DJ built into the redesign. Parent company The One Group Hospitality described it as an upgrade to the brand's "Vibe Dining" concept rather than a retreat from the market.
Meanwhile, the original Stetson Drive building didn't sit empty for long either. BOA Steakhouse, from the team behind the long-running Sushi Roku at the W Scottsdale, is slated to move into that space in 2026, with the building's second floor becoming a standalone rooftop concept called Above All Else, according to Phoenix New Times. Between the relocation and the incoming replacement, STK's closure resolved itself in well under a year. By the time the Tribune was writing about Old Town's empty storefronts, this particular story was already old news.
The Corner That Actually Took Longer
RnR's building is a different case, and it's the one that earned the "ghost town" description honestly. From its June 2025 closure through the Tribune's August 2026 piece, the 3737 N. Scottsdale Road address sat vacant for more than a year, long enough to become the specific example cited when the paper described the building "across Scottsdale Road" as still empty.
That changed only weeks after the Tribune's story ran. General Admission, a sports gastropub founded by Los Angeles brothers Kamran and Kourosh Pourkazemi with existing locations in Los Angeles and at the UnCommons development in Las Vegas, confirmed plans for a fall opening at the RnR address, according to reporting from Hoodline. Renderings show a dark interior built around a long bar, booths, and televisions positioned for sports viewing, a different concept than RnR's exposed-brick gastropub look but the same basic bet on the two-story building's street presence.
Evening Entertainment Group, the company that closed RnR in the first place, isn't leaving Old Town either. The group has its own new concept in the works, a 21-and-over rooftop DJ brunch venue called Holla Brunch Girl, set to open in Old Town on September 26, 2026. The company that some read as the first sign of trouble is opening a second business in the same district within the same year.
A Task Force Formed Around the Same Worry
The vacancy concern was serious enough that Scottsdale's mayor announced the formation of a Downtown Scottsdale Task Force this past May, a group described in the city's own materials as a collaborative advisory body meant to guide the long-term vitality and character of Old Town. The task force is chaired by Ryan Hibbert of Riot Hospitality Group, a company with its own significant footprint in Old Town's entertainment district, and met twice that month before holding a walking tour in June to survey specific vacant storefronts.
Janie White, whose father Malcolm White served as Scottsdale's first mayor and coined the phrase "The West's Most Western Town," offered a measured take on what her father would make of the current moment. She told the Tribune he would still be proud of Old Town, but that he would likely want the city to stay out of trying to manage restaurants and retail directly. It's a reasonable tension. The task force was formed to watch for exactly the kind of vacancy that, in at least one of its two highest-profile cases, had already been quietly resolved by the private market before the committee held its first walking tour.
What This Actually Changes for Anyone Walking Scottsdale Road This Fall
If you've been avoiding that stretch near Scottsdale Road and First Street because you remember it being dark, it isn't anymore. STK has been open there since November 2025. If you're mapping out a weekend plan, Holla Brunch Girl opens Saturday, September 26, with a rooftop DJ brunch format that didn't exist in Old Town before. The RnR building will have activity again this fall once General Admission's build-out finishes, and the old STK Waterfront space has a steakhouse and rooftop bar already lined up for later in 2026.
None of this means every vacant storefront in Old Town is spoken for. The task force's own walking tour suggests otherwise, and a gap of well over a year, like the one at RnR's old address, is a real cost to a block, not a rounding error. But the two buildings that carried the "ghost town" narrative this summer turned out to be running on different timelines than the headline suggested, and knowing which one had already turned over is the difference between avoiding a corner that's actually busy again and correctly clocking the one that's still waiting on its next tenant.
If you're curious what any of this means for property values or timing on that stretch of Old Town, Clayton Wolfe tracks these shifts as part of daily work in the neighborhood. Request a Private Consultation any time you want to talk through what's actually happening on the ground.
