For most of the past year, the building at 8700 East Pinnacle Peak Road has sat behind Preston's old signage, closed, waiting on repairs the previous tenant said the space badly needed. If you live in the 85255 corridor, you have driven past it. You have probably wondered what was going in. The answer, arriving sometime this fall, is not simply a new restaurant. It is an attempt to fix a pattern that has repeated at this exact corner for forty years.
The Citadel opened in 1985, designed by Vern Swaback, a Scottsdale architect who trained under Frank Lloyd Wright. In the decades since, the restaurant space at that address has turned over again and again. Local history records list 8700, Market Café, Marque Bar, Michael's, BICE, Preston's Steakhouse, and Café Ted as the tenants who have occupied that footprint before it went dark. Eight restaurants in four decades, most of them variations on the same idea: a nice room, a menu built for a two-hour dinner, and a business model that depends on guests treating the visit as an occasion rather than a habit.
Preston's, the most recent, followed that same script for roughly a decade. Chef Charles Schwerd ran it as a family operation, carrying forward a steakhouse tradition passed down through his grandfather, father, and uncle. When it closed, the announcement cited the condition of the building and the repairs it needed after more than ten years of use. It was a well-liked restaurant. It was also, structurally, the same bet every prior tenant had made: one dining room, one seating, one reason to come.
What's Actually Moving In
Sheila Bryson, founder and CEO of Soul Hospitality Group, is taking over the space with ALMA, relocating from its original Old Town Scottsdale location that closed earlier this year. But the new ALMA is not a like-for-like swap. Bryson has described the buildout as a Southwest steakhouse built around wood-fired cooking, pulling flavors from Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and Northern Mexico. Alongside the dining room, the property will include Copper Club, a rooftop lounge with live music and desert views, and a separate tequila and mezcal bar serving tastings paired with chef-created tacos and small bites. A western fashion boutique, Barbwire Western Couture, is also returning to the building, offering clothing, jewelry, boots, and hats.
The detail worth sitting with is not the menu. It is the way Bryson has designed the space so guests move between rooms without starting over. You can sit down for a steak dinner, walk up to the roof for a cocktail, and end the night at the tequila bar, all under one ticket, one visit, one building. In her own words, announcing the project:
"We're building more than a restaurant. We're creating a place to celebrate, gather, explore, shop, toast, and make memories."
That is a different premise than anything that has occupied this address before. Preston's asked for a two-hour commitment on a Friday night. What Bryson is building asks for something closer to an entire evening spread across four different reasons to be there, which changes who shows up and how often. A rooftop cocktail on a Tuesday does not require the same occasion as a Delmonico dinner. Neither does a tequila flight with friends before a Saturday night out. The corner has never had a format like this, and that is the actual story behind the reopening, more than the fact that a new restaurant is arriving.
The Plaza Already Solved Mornings
What makes the timing interesting is that the other half of the day at this address has already been figured out. Little Snitch, also a Soul Hospitality Group concept, opened next door in the same plaza in 2024 as a counter-service coffee shop and bakery. It does not take reservations. Orders go through the counter, and the space runs on a walk-up coffee window, a bakery case, and made-to-order brunch through early afternoon. It is the fifth concept from Bryson, following Soul Café, Vic & Ola's, Pescada, and now ALMA, and it has built a following of its own for the garden patio and the kitschy interior.
One detail says more about the place than any menu description could. Parked out front is a 1954 Nash Metropolitan, the very car Bryson owned as her first, kept on display as a piece of the plaza's identity rather than a marketing prop. It is the kind of thing you notice once and then look for every time you drive past.
Put the two concepts together and the math changes for the whole corner. Little Snitch already covers the morning, coffee before work, a bakery counter for the office, brunch on weekends. ALMA is being built to cover the evening across three connected spaces instead of one dining room. For the first time in the Citadel's history, one address is being deliberately engineered to hold a resident's entire day rather than a single reservation.
When to Actually Expect It
The opening date is still moving. Bryson has publicly targeted October 1, and multiple outlets covering the relocation have reported that same date, while noting her own caveat that construction progress could push the reopening into early November. Reservations for the new concept are already open through ALMA's website, which is the most reliable place to watch for firm dates as the building nears completion. Updates on construction progress have also been posted through the restaurant's Instagram account.
If the October 1 target holds, ALMA Southwest Steakhouse will be open in time for the first cool evenings of fall, which tend to be when patio and rooftop seating in North Scottsdale gets used the hardest. If it slips into November, that still lands well ahead of the holiday season, when a rooftop lounge with live music and desert views becomes exactly the kind of reservation residents look for when family is in town.
Why the Difference Matters More Than the Opening
Eight restaurants have tried to make this corner work by offering one good room and hoping guests treated it as a destination. Most of them did well for years before closing, Preston's included. What none of them did was give residents more than one reason to walk through the door. A steakhouse dinner is a special occasion. A rooftop cocktail bar, a tequila tasting, and a coffee counter next door are habits.
That is the bet Bryson is making with this rebuild, and it is a bet the Citadel has not had the chance to test before. Whether it works will show up in how the corner feels a year from now, whether Copper Club becomes a Tuesday habit or another special-occasion room, and whether the plaza finally holds onto a tenant for longer than a decade. For now, the sign is still dark, the construction is still underway, and the reservations page is open for a date that has not quite been locked in yet.
If you have questions about how a change like this ripples through property values or buyer interest in the streets closest to Pinnacle Peak and Pima, that is the kind of neighborhood-level read Kevin Owens tracks closely across North Scottsdale. Make a Move when you are ready to talk about what a corner like this means for your own address.
