Walk east along Market Street past the fire pit tables and you'll notice the space before you read the sign. Warm wood, dark glass, a patio that faces the street instead of hiding from it. This used to be Liberty Station Tavern. Late last year it became Tomu-San Sushi, and if you didn't already know, you might not guess that the person who opened it is the same person behind the wine list at The Living Room and the mole sauce at Elvira's.
That's Tom Kaufman, and Tomu-San Sushi sits directly across from The Living Room and right next door to Elvira's. As of its opening, he owns three of Market Street's sit-down restaurants. Not partnered with. Not consulting for. Owns.
That fact matters more than the sushi menu does, and it's worth unpacking why.
A Decade of Slow Build, Then Three in a Row
Kaufman's first restaurant on this stretch of Pima Road was Elvira's, which opened around 2009. Five years later, in 2014, he added The Living Room Wine Bar directly across the street. Then, more than a decade after that second opening, he took over the old Liberty Station space and built Tomu-San Sushi right where the previous tenant had been.
Three restaurants, one owner, sixteen years of steady investment in the same 37 acres of retail. That's not a restaurateur testing a market. That's someone who has already decided the market works and keeps adding to his own bet.
What Ownership Concentration Actually Buys You
When one operator controls adjoining businesses on a strip, the relationship between operator and location changes. A tenant leases space and hopes foot traffic finds the door. An owner with three storefronts on the same block already knows what a Tuesday at 6 p.m. looks like, because he's walked past it a hundred times.
Kaufman said as much when Tomu-San was announced. Asked why he chose this particular spot for his most ambitious concept yet, he didn't talk about demographics or rent comps.
"I reside within the DC Ranch community, and I feel like I really understand the flavor profiles of the customer and know how to turn them into regulars."
That's not a line from a press release written by someone who studied the neighborhood. It's the logic of a person whose Sunday walk takes him past his own dining rooms. It shows up in small operational choices too. Tomu-San's happy hour runs daily from 4:30 to 6:00 p.m., a window built to catch people finishing their workday at Market Street's office tenants before they've committed to dinner elsewhere, not after.
The Restaurant That Used to Require a Drive
Before Tomu-San, an omakase-level sushi counter in this part of Scottsdale meant getting in the car and heading toward Old Town or the North Scottsdale restaurant corridor. Now it sits at the corner of Pima Road and Thompson Peak Parkway, inside the same lifestyle center as the Safeway.
Executive Chef Christopher George leads the kitchen. He spent twenty years at Roy's before this, which is the kind of resume that usually lands in a downtown tower, not a neighborhood strip mall anchored by a grocery store. The counter seating and multi-course tasting format weren't scaled down for a suburban address. They were built at full strength and placed there anyway, because the person who financed it lives close enough to walk.
The Quieter Confirmation: A Second Location, Not a First
Six months before Tomu-San opened, Light Heart Coffee opened its second Scottsdale location at Market Street in May 2025. That timing matters more than it looks like at first glance.
A company opening its first location somewhere is making a guess. A company opening its second location in the same city, at the same retail strip, is confirming that the first one already worked and betting the pattern repeats. Two credible openings in eight months, from two unrelated operators, is not a coincidence. It's the kind of signal that shows up after a slow stretch ends, not before.
Market Street didn't open at this level of activity. The center launched as a high-profile mixed-use destination, lost tenants during the downturn years that followed, and spent a long stretch recovering before names like these started filling in the empty storefronts again. What changed recently is the pace of who's willing to commit, and for how long.
What's Still the Same
None of this replaces the restaurants residents already have memorized. If you've lived in DC Ranch for more than a season, you already know this list without checking a map:
- Fleming's Steakhouse for a celebration dinner
- Grimaldi's Pizzeria when the kids are picking
- Eggstasy on a Saturday morning worth the wait
- The Herb Box for a lunch that doesn't feel like a compromise
- All American Modern Sports Grill for a weekend with live music on the patio
The new arrivals aren't competing with that list. They're extending the hours people already spend on this block, adding a sushi counter to a rotation that used to end with dinner and now includes a nightcap two doors down.
Why the Landlord Isn't Worried
Whitestone REIT owns Market Street's 37 acres and its fifteen buildings, and Kaufman has described his relationship with them as a decade-long partnership. That continuity is part of why he was able to concentrate three tenancies with the same landlord instead of negotiating three separate leases with three separate owners who might not think past the next renewal cycle. A landlord who has watched one tenant succeed for a decade has less reason to second-guess handing him a third space when it opens up.
What This Actually Changes
If you live in DC Ranch, the practical version of this story is simple. A night that used to require choosing between staying local for something familiar or driving toward Old Town for something new no longer requires that choice. Coffee, wine, and an omakase counter now sit within a five-minute walk of each other, run in part by a neighbor who has been building toward this for sixteen years.
That's a different kind of confidence signal than a quarterly earnings report or a press release. It's the kind that only shows up when you watch what the same person keeps doing with his own money, on the same block, over a decade and a half.
If you're curious about what else is changing around DC Ranch, or you're weighing a move within North Scottsdale and want someone who tracks this kind of detail block by block, The Real Estate Experts of Phoenix spends as much time watching what opens on Market Street as we do watching what closes on a listing. Reach out whenever you're ready to talk about either one.
