Biltmore Fashion Park opened with two department stores in 1963 and had three of them by 1968. One is still trading. It's an open-air shopping center at 24th Street and Camelback Road in Phoenix, Arizona, and it has remained open-air through its major renovations.
All three of those store buildings are still standing. One of them still holds a department store, and that one is Macy's, which took the name over from The Broadway.
Saks Fifth Avenue closed in April 2026, and about 92,000 square feet in the middle of the center has been empty since. Saks had been on the property since the year it opened.
A fitness club, restaurants, and a floor of offices fill much of the rest of the center, and RED has not announced what will replace Saks.
Biltmore opened with two department stores
Biltmore Fashion Park's first two stores opened a month apart, one in September 1963 and one in October, on about 31 acres at the northeast corner of 24th Street and Camelback Road.
Phoenix treated that corner as the edge of the built city then.
The center went up low and open-air, and it's still there in Phoenix, Arizona, running shops, restaurants, a fitness club, and offices.
Low buildings bordered the outdoor courts. Brick paving carried shoppers past garden beds and cafe seating.
The two department stores were I. Magnin and Saks Fifth Avenue. Saks took about 60,000 square feet.
John Smith made sand-cast mural panels for its 1963 exterior, alongside regional stone and concrete decoration using Native American motifs.
Rosenzweig's Jewelers, Elizabeth Arden, and Gittings Portrait Studio were among the names at Biltmore in its early decades.
The third department store came five years later.
The Broadway opened on October 28, 1968, north and west of the 1963 core, and it pushed the retail footprint in that direction.
Biltmore had three department-store buildings instead of two.
I. Magnin closes, Saks changes buildings
I. Magnin's Biltmore store had just been remodeled for millions of dollars when Macy moved to shut the chain down during its merger with Federated.
The store closed in December 1994, and about 90,000 square feet went empty in the middle of the center.
Saks Fifth Avenue took it.
Saks had been trading a few steps away in about 60,000 square feet since 1963, and on March 23, 1995 it reopened with half again as much floor, in a building someone else had just paid to renovate.
By 2001, a garden east of the original Saks held some of the facade panels removed after the 1995 move.
Then the third store changed its name. Federated converted The Broadway to Macy's in 1996.
By the end of that year Saks was in the former I. Magnin and Macy's was in the former Broadway.
The original 1963 Saks building had lost its namesake tenant.
Five towers approved, none built
A $30 million rebuild ran for about 11 months and was finished in 2006, with the center trading through it.
Storefronts lost their deep overhangs, and the buildings and landscaping were redone.
Outside them, crews worked through the parking lots section by section, eventually repaving nearly 15 acres without closing the center.
Biltmore stayed open-air.
While that went on, the city was deciding how tall this corner could get.
The council approved amendments to the Camelback East plan in September 2005.
Opponents gathered enough signatures to put the decision to voters, so in December the council rescinded its own approval and started over, this time with an independent mediator working through heights and setbacks.
The revised plan came back in May 2006.
The final Biltmore approval came on November 1, 2006. It allowed five towers, set the ceiling at 165 feet, and left their timing to demand.
None was built. One of those tower sites was the surface parking at the southeast corner near 26th Street. It stayed surface parking.
Life Time adds 105,000 square feet
The next large space at Biltmore opened beside that parking.
Life Time opened on March 6, 2020 at the east end of the property, about 105,000 square feet on two levels with a beach club on the roof, and members were coming through the doors at 4 a.m. on March 9.
It was the chain's fifth Arizona club and its first inside an Arizona shopping center.
That's more floor than Saks was trading in across the site, and none of it is retail.
The club didn't take over the old Saks building either. Its space is at the east end, and the Saks store sat near the middle.
It went in beside the buildings that were already there, and it was the last major work Macerich did at the center before selling out four years later.
Offices above Ralph Lauren
In July 2024 RED Development bought the half of Biltmore Fashion Park it didn't already own, for $110 million, and took over the whole center.
Then it went upstairs.
About 30,000 square feet upstairs had spent years as back-of-house space, with Brooks Brothers among the retailers keeping stock there.
Saks had used the space too before moving to its larger Biltmore store in 1995.
RED turned it into offices in 2024 and moved its own headquarters in. Four companies had taken the whole floor by May 2026.
Today those offices sit above The Capital Grille, Ralph Lauren, and Herman Miller.
It's half the floor area the 1963 Saks had, back in use as something nobody walks into off the lawn.
The tower hasn't moved as fast. Phoenix reviewed its preliminary site plan on December 15, 2025.
RED's proposal puts a 10-story building of about 330,000 square feet on the parking at Camelback Road and 26th Street, with hotel and office space above ground-floor retail.
A January 2026 project update still listed no general contractor.
Saks goes dark at Biltmore
The Biltmore Saks traded through late April, ending 67 Arizona jobs.
Its closure had been announced on February 10, one of eight Saks Fifth Avenue stores named less than a month after Saks Global entered Chapter 11.
The empty 92,000-square-foot store near the middle of the site belonged to I. Magnin first.
Saks moved into it in March 1995 after operating elsewhere at Biltmore since 1963. No new use has been announced.
Seasons 52 closed at the end of May after nearly 16 years at Biltmore, leaving its chain with no Arizona location and the center with a second space to fill.
Macy's is the last department store, still in the building The Broadway opened in 1968. The office floor above Ralph Lauren is full.
The center opens at 10 in the morning six days a week, parking is free, and the old Saks is still empty beside the lawn.
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