The Parque Scottsdale: What’s Replacing CrackerJax

Last updated: August 18, 2026 — figures below reflect the City of Scottsdale record as of this date.

What The Parque actually is

The Parque is a mixed-use development approved for the former CrackerJax property at 16001 N. Scottsdale Road, on the east side of Scottsdale Road between Paradise Lane and Frank Lloyd Wright Boulevard, on the western edge of the Scottsdale Airpark.

The approved plan calls for twelve buildings ranging from one to ten stories, built around a public central park. Uses include apartments and condominiums, a five-star hotel, Class A office space, restaurants, retail and a fitness component. The City of Scottsdale’s own announcement described more than 250,000 square feet of commercial space and, in the developer’s materials, more than two million square feet of total floor area at full build-out.

The developer is FalconEye Ventures, founded by George Kurtz — the co-founder and CEO of cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike. The architect of record is Nelsen Partners, with Jeff Brand as the project’s lead architect. Zoning attorney John Berry of Berry Riddell represented the case through the city process.

The word Scottsdale officials kept using was “landmark.” Mayor David D. Ortega, in the city’s release announcing the approval, framed it as a reflection of Scottsdale’s sustainable development ideals and pointed to the cybersecurity employment it was expected to attract.

What CrackerJax was, and why the name confuses Google

CrackerJax Family Fun & Sports Park opened in 1993, built and owned by the Herberger family, who also owned the land. It billed itself as Arizona’s largest family fun and sports park across 28 acres.

What was actually on the property:

• CrackerJax Speedway — the park’s own materials described a go-kart track over 1,200 feet long, which it called the longest in Arizona, with hairpin curves, S-curves and a banked section. Single and two-seat karts, a 56-inch minimum height for drivers, $7 a ride.
• Lagoona Island bumper boats — the ones with the waterfall you drove through on purpose in July, which is the entire reason anyone went in summer.
• Three miniature golf courses, batting cages, a full driving range and a separate putting course.
• An arcade and a birthday-party operation that ran for three decades of Scottsdale childhoods.

The park’s Facebook page logged more than 30,000 check-ins before it went dark. That number is a decent proxy for how many Valley families cycled through the place.

Why did CrackerJax close?

CrackerJax closed because the land it sat on was sold, and the buyer had different plans for it. That is the short answer, and it is the accurate one.

The longer version has three parts.

The land was worth more than the business. Twenty-eight acres of frontage on Scottsdale Road next to the Airpark is some of the most valuable undeveloped commercial ground in the state. In April 2022 the Herberger family sold it to CrackerJax Land Company LLC — a Kurtz entity — for $55.5 million.

The park had aged. Reviews in its final years described stalling go-karts, dated arcade cabinets and mini-golf courses that needed money spent on them. Newer entertainment venues around the Valley had raised the bar, and CrackerJax had not kept pace.

There was a brief reprieve, then there wasn’t. In April 2022, right after the sale went public, general manager John King told AZFamily the park had a lease and would stay open “at least a couple of years,” with the karts, boats, range, mini-golf and arcade all still running. That did not hold. The park closed permanently later in 2022, and by July of that year its equipment was being sold off through an online auction. The empty site was afterwards used on occasion by the Scottsdale Fire Department for training exercises.

By mid-2025, local coverage described the property as fenced with no-trespassing signs that were being ignored, scattered with broken glass. Three years is a long time for prime frontage to sit empty on the city’s namesake road, and that gap became part of the political story around the project.

The full approval timeline, date by date

Nobody else has put the whole sequence in one place, so here it is. Every entry below is drawn from City of Scottsdale records or contemporaneous local reporting.

What Phase One actually includes

Phase One is roughly 15 percent of the residential program. It is not the hotel, and it is not the office tower. It is the piece that proves the concept.

Both residential buildings sit above ground-floor retail or restaurant space, which is the detail that determines whether this ends up feeling like a neighborhood or a parking podium. The pre-approval renderings released through the city give the clearest look at the intended street level:

Why every article gives a different number

If you have read three articles about The Parque you have seen three different acreages and at least two different hotel sizes. That is not sloppiness on anyone’s part — the figures changed as the project moved through the city process, and different sources froze different moments. Here is the whole spread, with the source for each.

Is The Parque under construction yet?

Not vertically. As of August 2026 the site is still largely vacant ground.

The approvals are done. Zoning cleared in November 2023, Phase One cleared the Development Review Board in November 2025, and the remaining gate is building permits. In June 2026 project architect Jeff Brand told ABC15 that infrastructure work — utilities and water lines, not buildings — could begin within about 30 days once those permits issued.

That is the realistic sequence for a project this size: dirt and pipe first, structures later. If you drive past and see trenching equipment rather than cranes, that is the project starting, not stalling.

The Parque is one piece of a much bigger buying spree

Reading about The Parque on its own understates what is happening on that stretch of Scottsdale Road. Kurtz has assembled a portfolio around it.

Add the neighbors and the picture gets larger still. Optima McDowell Mountain Village sits less than three miles north on Scottsdale Road at Mayo Boulevard, at a comparable price tag. The One Scottsdale masterplan and Nationwide’s Cavasson are in the same corridor. Axon’s headquarters project is under three miles away. This is the densest concentration of billion-dollar development in Arizona right now, and The Parque is in the middle of it.

The water and sustainability commitments

In a desert city, the water plan is the part worth reading closely. The approved development commits to:

• Harvesting and reusing rainwater and air conditioning condensate for landscape irrigation, cutting demand on external water sources. In a Phoenix-area summer, AC condensate is not a trivial volume.
• Capturing rainwater through specialized pavements and storing it underground, with a stormwater system designed to recharge the aquifer — the figure published in project materials is 4.9 million gallons a year.
• More than 1,000 new trees planted on and off site.
• A parking structure with a green roof, solar generation and EV charging, plus what has been described as Scottsdale’s first net-zero office building.
• Four bicycle stations and a pedestrian-first internal street layout.

Who voted against it, and why

The rezoning passed 5–2. Councilmembers Barry Graham and Kathy Littlefield voted no — the same two who later opposed the Axon rezoning.

Littlefield’s stated objection was about height and proximity: putting more than a thousand apartments in tall buildings that close to active Scottsdale Airport runways. Her line at the hearing was that it only takes one accident.

Residents wrote in as well, and the complaints clustered on density and apartments rather than the project’s design. Traffic on Scottsdale Road was the other recurring theme, given The Promenade already sits directly across the street.

That opposition is worth recording accurately, because it is the part that gets flattened out of the promotional coverage. A 5–2 vote is an approval. It is not a consensus.

Where to take the kids now that CrackerJax is gone

This is the practical question underneath a lot of the searching, so here is a straight answer from someone who has lived here for thirty years.

The closest thing to a CrackerJax replacement in Scottsdale is PopStroke in Scottsdale — the Tiger Woods-backed mini golf and restaurant concept. It is a different animal: no go-karts, no bumper boats, considerably more polished, and it gets busy. We have a separate breakdown of whether you need reservations for PopStroke Scottsdale, which is the question everyone asks second.

If the actual goal is a day out in Scottsdale rather than a specific ride, our guide to things to do in Scottsdale covers the range, and where famous people actually go in Scottsdale is the one people share the most.

For eating around the area: the best restaurants in Old Town Scottsdale is fifteen minutes south, Scottsdale happy hour covers the after-work end, and the Andaz Scottsdale Resort & Spa is the closest resort option if you are visiting rather than local. Check Scottsdale weather before you commit to anything outdoors between May and September — this is the desert, and the go-karts were never the thing that beat you, the pavement was.

The Parque Scottsdale: frequently asked questions

Sources and further reading

• City of Scottsdale — Redevelopment of the CrackerJax site moves forward
• City of Scottsdale — public case file for the project
• ABC15 Arizona — Groundbreaking expected soon at the former CrackerJax site
• Scottsdale Progress — Parque preliminary phase passes the Development Review Board

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