As the Arizona Daily Star reported, when Jose Delgado walked into the Borderlands taproom on Sixth Street last August, the place looked abandoned. No fresh paint, no artwork on the walls, no Borderlands beer behind the bar because there hadn't been any for months. He was a minority investor being handed a business after its sister location on East River Road got locked out by its landlord for nonpayment, the second time that had happened to a Borderlands-affiliated shop that year. The brewery's original flagship on Toole Avenue had already gone dark that June for the same reason. Delgado and two partners, Rogelio Quintero and Adrian Perez, spent weeks deep-cleaning a kitchen and repainting walls in what had, until recently, been one of Sam Hughes's better-known bars.
Delgado didn't try to relaunch Borderlands as a brewery. He pulled the taps of a beer nobody had brewed since early 2025 and replaced the menu with tacos, burgers, and hot dogs, the food he'd grown up eating in Nogales. "We don't need another fancy place," he told the Arizona Daily Star. "We already have pretty good restaurants in front of us and I love going to those places." The past year and a half has brought a range of food and drink offerings to the Village at Sam Hughes, from casual fare to a morning coffee pop-up.
Two Storefronts, One Deal
As Tucson.com reported, the other big turnover on the block happened next door, inside the century-old Rincon Market building at the corner of Sixth and Tucson Boulevard. Flora's Market Run had occupied the space at 2513 East Sixth Street until it closed abruptly on January 6, 2025. Three weeks later, the owners of Sonoran House, a coffee roaster and market from the Blenman-Elm district, had already worked out a deal to move in alongside Redbird Scratch Kitchen + Bar, a comfort-food bar expanding from its original Orange Grove and Oracle location.
The two businesses didn't open until September 1, 2025, eight months after Flora's closed, giving them time to gut and rebuild. Redbird brought in the same forest-green booths and cacti murals from its north-side spot, plus a new custom mural by Tucson and Austin-based artist Delsa Designs. Redbird partner Thomas McCarthy grew up three blocks from the space and used to eat at Rincon Market as a kid. Executive chef Rory Martin called it fitting, since the building was about to turn 100. "We know we have big shoes to fill," he told Tucson.com. The menu that filled them was smash burgers, al pastor wings, and elote nachos, the same scratch-made bar food Redbird had been serving since 2023. Nothing about the opening tried to reinvent the building's role on the block. It kept serving that scratch-made bar food in a neighborhood that mixes students and longtime homeowners.
The Taproom That Kept Adding Layers
Borderlands didn't stop at burgers and hot dogs. As Tucson.com reported, by January 2026, the taproom had picked up a second identity, hosting a pop-up location of Barista del Barrio, the James Beard-nominated coffee and breakfast burrito shop, running mornings from 7 a.m. to noon on weekdays and 8 a.m. to noon on weekends. Founder Flavia Briones described it as a pop-up that she hoped would become permanent. Her niece Jessica Sims noted the food would be assembled on-site from ingredients prepared at Barista's flagship location on North Grande Avenue. For a few hours each morning, a space that had been locked out by its landlord six months earlier was serving horchata lattes to people heading to campus.
Tucson Foodie reported that on September 19 of this year, Borderlands added a third layer: BRAVA at Borderlands, a full dinner concept built around handmade nixtamal masa and regional Mexican and Paraguayan cooking. Executive chef Fernando Luévanos, who trained at Escuela Culinaria Internacional in Guadalajara and spent years cooking in Sonora before settling in Tucson, runs the kitchen alongside Ceci Velázquez, who brought her family's Paraguayan cooking from Asunción. General manager Arnoldo Celaya, a Tucson native, built the cocktail program. The menu runs tacos at five to six dollars, huaraches, sopes, and quesadillas built around a handmade corn masa program, with regular hours from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily and bar and karaoke taking over from 9 p.m. to 1 a.m. on weekends.
That's three distinct food operations layered into one taproom in about thirteen months. BRAVA's tacos run five to six dollars, and the corner sits less than a mile from the University of Arizona and inside one of Midtown's most walkable, most historic commercial addresses.
The Space Still Waiting
Not every storefront in the Village has turned over yet. As Tucson Foodie reported, at the east end of the strip, 2527 East Sixth Street sat empty after Ampersand Old & New closed, and in January 2026 husband-and-wife team Sally and Glenn Murphy announced plans to open Unraveled Pasta + Bar there. The Murphys already run The Cork Tucson and UnCork'd Kitchen & Cocktails, and they modeled the new concept on a neighborhood restaurant they once owned in Perth, Australia. Sally Shamrell-Murphy described an offering with low-to-moderate pricing, daily service from 3 to 10 p.m., and a customizable pasta menu rather than a fixed tasting format.
As of this fall, no announcement has confirmed that Unraveled Pasta has actually opened, which means the spring or summer 2026 window the Murphys mentioned in January has already passed without a public debut. The last vacancy on this block is still waiting to be filled, and whoever eventually opens there will join a block where new tenants have brought a range of food and drink offerings.
A Block That Already Knew Its Limits
As KGUN9 reported, back in 2024, when developer Ross Rulney proposed rezoning the Village at Sam Hughes to a Planned Area Development, giving the property more flexibility to add tenants, the Sam Hughes Neighborhood Association pushed back. Association president Gayle Hartmann told KGUN9 that the block already held three businesses serving alcohol, Bob Dobbs, Borderlands, and Flora's Market Run, and that overflow parking from popular spots like Tumerico was already sending diners across a busy street on foot. The association asked for the rezoning timeline to slow down.
That fight predates everything described above, and it's worth remembering because it shows this wasn't empty land looking for a big idea. It was a tight, already-crowded corner where neighbors were actively worried about too much activity, not too little. Since then, Borderlands has added tacos and burgers, Redbird has brought its comfort food, Barista has run a morning pop-up, BRAVA has served tacos priced at five to six dollars, and Unraveled has been planned with low-to-moderate pricing. Bob Dobbs and Tumerico, the two anchors that predate all of this churn, kept running through every bit of it.
What's left standing at the Village at Sam Hughes today is a block that rebuilt almost entirely from scratch in under two years, with offerings ranging from casual fare to a morning coffee pop-up. Together, those businesses give the block a varied food-and-drink lineup.
If you're the kind of Sam Hughes neighbor who already has an opinion about which taco at BRAVA beats the other, or you're wondering what finally happens to that last empty storefront on Sixth Street, Iris Pasos is the person in this neighborhood actually keeping track of it. Send a message if you want to compare notes on what's changing here next.
