Welcome to Old Town Scottsdale’s ‘tasteful’ era. How the district is changing

Article originally posted on AZ Central on August 12, 2025

Long known as a destination for college students (and those wishing they were still college students), a handful of new restaurant and hospitality developments aim to pivot Old Town Scottsdale away from nightclub culture to appeal to a broader range of demographics.

“This has been a calculated shift by our company to elevate the offerings in the hospitality district,” said Lissa Druss, a spokesperson for Riot Hospitality, which owns and operates several restaurants and clubs in Old Town. “A lot of this has been in the works for years.”

Riot Hospitality recently opened Shiv Supper Club, located at the site of a former nightclub.

“We saw a need to bring back the iconic supper club,” Druss said. The restaurant also has a separate dessert room, where patrons can come just to get a dessert or cocktail.

Along with Shiv Supper Club, other businesses that have leaned into embracing a more mature audience include the new Sexy Roman restaurant at the W Scottsdale hotel, Mother Tucker’s Tavern, which also replaced a nightclub, and the Remi Scottsdale hotel, which offers four dining and drink venues inside.

Scottsdale Mayor Lisa Borowsky applauded the businesses’ and developers’ concerted effort to elevate Old Town’s image.

“I think it’s really already showing itself to have great results,” she said, pointing to the recent opening of the Remi.

While she and other city officials are enthusiastic about the shift to a more mature downtown district, Borowsky stressed the area still will be welcoming to the younger, college crowd.

“I think there’s always going to be that place for Old Town to have a younger, more entertainment-centric vibe,” she said. “But I love that ‘upscale, luxury’ is really being intentionally planned and developed.”

Sexy Roman replaces Sushi Roku at the W Scottsdale. The space underwent a massive renovation to create the new restaurant, which added olive wood booths with integrated ice buckets, hand-troweled plaster walls and custom artwork.

The kitchen is led by James Beard-nominated chef Jason Franey. The restaurant offers high-end Italian dishes centered on fresh pasta, made in house.

Travis Strickland, chief operating officer of Alliance Hospitality, worked on both Sexy Roman and the Remi hotel. Creating destination restaurants inside hotels makes an amenity for both the community and hotel guests, he said.

“I see this becoming a destination place for the community,” Strickland said of the Remi and its extensive focus on food. “When I moved from the Midwest to California, I saw that people came and hung out at hotels, especially high-end hotels with a beautiful lobby, and there aren’t a lot of places like that.”

City leaders welcome ‘more tasteful redevelopment’

Rachel Smetana, Scottsdale’s tourism and events director, said that while the city isn’t actively driving the effort to steer Old Town toward a more mature audience and away from the clubbing and nightlife scene, it is “conceptually where we want to go.”

“The attractions of college students to our Old Town didn’t really support all that we’ve got going on here,” she said.

Scottsdale wants to be seen as an arts and culture hub, with museums, fine dining and events, Smetana said.

“We want to have national and international significance,” she said.

In other words, Scottsdale wants Old Town to “grow up.”

“We’re looking forward to seeing some more tasteful redevelopment,” Smetana said, adding, “a lot of investment is happening in Old Town, and we look forward to this next mature chapter.”

According to tourism data that the firm Longwoods International collected for the city, nearly one-third of Scottsdale’s visitors last year came to shop.

Scottsdale Fashion Square near downtown is a huge draw for those visitors, Smetana said.

“We’re so lucky that we still have a very vibrant mall that has not only stayed successful over the years but even improved and has a luxury focus,” she said.

Nightlife is still alive but changing

While Old Town enters a mature stage in its life, Borowsky doesn’t foresee the college crowd getting pushed out or the changes affecting the restaurants and bars that cater to the nightlife scene.

“There’s lot of options, I don’t think to the exclusion of anyone,” she said, adding, “People are either sticking with their business model or updating it, or changing it as they see fit.”

Nightclub culture isn’t over, but it is changing.

Riot Hospitality operates several clubs in Old Town, including Maya Dayclub, Cake Nightclub and Riot House. Evening Entertainment Group, which opened Mother Tucker’s Tavern, also owns Bottled Blonde, Casa Amigos and Hi Fi Kitchen & Cocktails.

“We have really high-quality nightlife in the hospitality district,” Druss said of Riot Hospitality. “We wanted to add to that with elevated experiences, literally elevating the hospitality district.”

Diane Corieri, owner of Evening Entertainment Group, said dining trends after the pandemic have shifted away from high-energy nightclubs in favor of more relaxed, lounge-like venues.

“People should come to Old Town and take a second look at what’s going on there,” Corieri said. “Things have changed; we have a whole new clientele coming in.”

Jason Adler, chief development officer for Riot Hospitality, said dining out has become a central form of entertainment, so offering restaurants that feel unique cater to patrons’ desires.

“They want a full experience in every single place they go,” he said.

Reenvisioning Old Town … perhaps with more parking

Scottsdale’s general and strategic plans highlight the city’s goals of creating interesting streetscapes and a walkable live-work environment downtown. It’s there that the city wants to also actively promote arts and culture.

Smetana stressed though that the city’s leaders and its boards and committees aren’t judging projects based on the type of businesses that are being proposed.

“They don’t come at it with the thought of the actual business use, but more how it fits into the built environment,” she said, noting that Scottsdale has lofty development standards across the city and high property values.

“The citizens would have a lot to say about zoning requests and bad projects, some of those don’t generally come forward,” she said. “What we have is a very graceful investment in Old Town specifically.”

For the restaurateurs, the change is still a work in progress. Riot Hospitality is working on a redevelopment project at Camelback Road and Saddlebag Trail. The project included razing a vacant office building and redeveloping it as a restaurant, which will be named Calle Rosa.

The group hasn’t revealed the planned menu yet, but Druss said it will be a “high-end, five-star restaurant.”

“It takes away an eyesore of a building,” she said.

Councilmember Barry Graham, who chairs the city’s Development Review Board, said the city needs to focus on creating conditions for Old Town to continue its evolution, like adding parking and marketing the area.

“There’s a role that city government must play,” he said, “and so we’re trying to not overplay that, trying to stay in our lane and just do things that we should do better.”