Scottsdale & McDowell: Sprouts Plans and Filiberto's Revival
The curved belfry still sits on top of 7847 E. McDowell Road, and it still has no bell in it. The brick under it used to be painted sunset orange and beige. Now it is a deep brick red, and a yellow Filiberto's sign glows on the front where the 1980s Taco Bell logo used to be. Inside and out on the patio, the 1970s tables are still there: rich brown, with blue, orange and red stripes across them.
About a mile west, at the southwest corner of Scottsdale and McDowell, Sprouts Farmers Market is building the grocery store South Scottsdale has been promised for years. As of mid-October 2026, the company's public target is still "towards the end of 2026."
The two sites tell one story about McDowell Road. The building nobody planned to keep had a new tenant within about 16 months of closing. The corner with a master plan, a city approval and a list of signed tenants has taken close to seven years and still hasn't delivered its anchor.
Taco Bell store No. 31 opened in the 1960s in the chain's original mission-style cantina design: arches, a Spanish tile roof and that empty belfry. By the 2020s it was, as Phoenix New Times put it, the last vintage cantina in Arizona and one of fewer than 10 left in the country.
Nobody set out to preserve it. The local history site Scottsdale.tips traces its survival to an operator, Desert De Oro Foods, that simply never remodeled. Meanwhile the chain turned its other Arizona stores into newer designs, and the corridor declined after Los Arcos Mall closed in 1999. In its final year the building had become something close to a marketing set. Taco Bell launched its Decades Menu there for Halloween 2024 and brought back a 1960s tostada for $2.19.
The cantina served its last customers on April 11, 2025. Its operator had built a larger Taco Bell about 300 feet east, with indoor restrooms, more seating and more parking, and the staff moved over. That newer store is listed at 7901 E. McDowell Road.
The old building sat empty for more than a year. In July 2026, Phoenix New Times reported that Filiberto's would take it over, with a member of the Tenorio family running the location. The family had started its restaurant business with a Southern California taco shop in 1964 and opened its first Arizona Filiberto's in Mesa in 1993. The chain's real estate broker told the paper the restaurant would keep the same "historic" look. The plan was to keep the striped tables and colorful chairs inside and on the patio.
New Times reported a target of mid-to-late August. Scottsdale.tips, in an entry fact-checked September 21, 2026, says Filiberto's reopened the building in August 2026 with the striped tables and teal chairs still there. We have not found an exact first day of service, and a quick call before a late-night drive is reasonable.
That puts two round-the-clock Mexican drive-thrus on the same block. The broker told New Times he wasn't worried about the overlap: "They have their people, we have our people."
The reuse went fast because it asked so little of anyone. A finished building with a working kitchen and a drive-thru lane only needed a tenant willing to repaint it. The corner a mile west needed far more.
Papago Plaza, the pueblo-style center at Scottsdale and McDowell, had been vacant and fenced for years before demolition began in late 2019. The developer said talks to buy the site had started back in 2013. Here is how the grocery piece has moved since then:
The apartments and the hotel each opened within a few years. The grocery store has slipped past every target set for it, first 2021 and then late 2025, and the wider marketplace's August 2026 completion estimate has passed as well.
The original fight was about what kind of store would go on the corner. In 2019, Scottsdale Progress reported that Safeway was among the full-service grocers some residents hoped for. The project's zoning attorney said larger chains had shown no interest, and Aldi was then expected to be the grocery tenant. The same coverage described mixed opinions. Some residents welcomed the redevelopment, while others objected to the housing, the building height, the hotel and how little retail was planned. The design team said it added retail space and enlarged the public open space in response.
The grocery store that is finally going up is a different company from the one first named. It also comes with its own three-level garage, a separate building project that AZBEX tracked apart from the general retail. The new equity for the marketplace was announced in August 2025, almost three years after the city approved the Sprouts plans, and Sprouts construction started after that.
What is confirmed and what is still a forecast, as of today:
The end of 2026 is about 11 weeks away. The most useful signs to watch for will be a Sprouts opening date and the first named tenant for the remaining retail space.
For South Scottsdale homeowners, what happens at Scottsdale and McDowell over the next few months will shape how this part of the city feels day to day. If you'd like to talk through what the new grocery anchor and the McDowell corridor might mean for your own home, let's connect for a private consultation. Contact Marianne Bazan for a confidential market evaluation.
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