Drive along Flamingo Road toward the western edge of Summerlin and you'll see it before you see anything else about The Ridges: a construction fence wrapping what used to be Bear's Best Las Vegas, dirt where fairways used to run, and a clubhouse footprint that looks nothing like the building it replaced. If you live in one of the twelve guard-gated enclaves that make up The Ridges, you've watched this for more than a year. What's easy to miss, standing at that fence, is that the course reopening behind it next month isn't coming back as the neighborhood amenity it used to be. It's coming back as something you can watch from your own backyard and still never set foot on.
That's the part worth understanding before the ribbon-cutting, because it changes what "next door to the golf course" actually means in The Ridges going forward.
What Closed and What's Replacing It
Bear's Best played its last public round on June 22, 2025. The course had been open since 2001, an 18-hole, par-72 layout designed by Jack Nicklaus using replica holes pulled from more than 200 courses he'd designed around the world. It earned a spot on Golf Digest's list of Best Places to Play and was named Best Golf Course in Las Vegas by the Las Vegas Review-Journal. For nearly a quarter century, anyone willing to pay the daily fee could book a tee time and play alongside the Ridges families who lived along its fairways.
That version of the course is gone. In 2024, Mulligan Holdings Inc., led by Andrew Pascal, the former Wynn Resorts COO who now runs the gaming company PlayStudios, and Mike Mixer, a co-founder of Colliers International, bought the property for $30.5 million. What they're building is a full teardown and reconstruction, not a facelift: a new two-level clubhouse with underground parking, a reception hall, spa, fitness center, wine lounge, business center, banquet rooms, and a fine dining restaurant. The old driving range is being replaced with a 6-hole par-3 course, and golf simulators are being added so members can practice through the parts of the year when the desert isn't cooperating. The project's landscape architecture comes from OJB, construction is being handled by PENTA Building Group, and the whole thing carries a reported price tag of $300 million.
The entrance is moving too. Instead of feeding off the old access road, the new entry point runs directly off Flamingo Road, a change residents driving past will notice before they notice much else.
The golf course and clubhouse are targeting an October 2026 reopening. That's next month. The residential piece of the project, a small collection of villas planned along the 18th hole, is running on a slower track, with construction expected to begin sometime in 2027.
The Membership Math Nobody Driving By Can See
Here's the number that reframes everything else about this project: Amara Golf Club, the new name for the property, is capping membership at 265 people. Not 265 households in The Ridges. Not 265 nearby homeowners. 265 total, split between 250 general memberships and 15 reserved specifically for the owners of the future villas.
| Amara Golf Club membership | Detail |
|---|---|
| Total membership cap | 265 (250 general + 15 villa-reserved) |
| Initiation fee | Starts at $250,000, rises every 50 memberships sold |
| Payment structure | 50% retainer at signup, remaining 50% due at course completion |
| Monthly dues | Approximately $4,000, includes family access for children up to age 25 |
There are roughly 380 homesites across all of The Ridges. Even if every single villa buyer takes their reserved membership, the math leaves the overwhelming majority of Ridges residents outside the fence, watching a golf course rise a few hundred yards from their own property line with no more claim to a tee time than someone visiting from Phoenix.
Proximity Was Never the Same as Access, and This Course Proves It
The Ridges already has a resident amenity built on the opposite model. Club Ridges, the community's own private facility, comes with a fitness center, resort-style pool, spa, and five lit tennis courts, and access is bundled into living in the community. Pay your enclave HOA, use the club. That's how amenities have worked here since the neighborhood was built out, and it's a reasonable assumption to carry over to whatever replaces Bear's Best.
Amara doesn't work that way, and the reason traces back to why Mulligan Holdings bought the course in the first place. A public, daily-fee golf course sitting in the middle of an ultra-luxury guard-gated community was always a mismatch. Anyone could book a round. The new ownership's entire strategy is to flip that: instead of a course that happens to sit inside The Ridges, build a members-only club that happens to use land inside The Ridges, priced and gated on its own terms. Membership is sold and priced entirely separately from any home purchase. Owning a $6 million estate on the fairway gets you a view. It does not get you a locker, a tee time, or a seat in the new dining room.
What Actually Changes for Residents This Fall
For most people living in The Ridges, the practical shifts are visible ones. The Flamingo Road entrance reconfiguration means the traffic pattern around the western edge of the community will look different than it has for the past year of construction. The clubhouse silhouette rising behind the fence is going to look nothing like the low, public-facing pro shop that used to sit there, a two-story building with underground parking is a different kind of neighbor than a snack bar and a starter's stand. And for residents whose homes back up to the old fairways, the view itself is changing shape as the redesign takes hold, with the par-3 course and simulator building occupying ground that used to be driving range.
None of that requires a membership to notice. The golf course at the center of The Ridges has been the community's most visible shared reference point for two decades, the thing people pointed to when describing where they lived. That's not disappearing. What's disappearing is the assumption that living near it means belonging to it.
If you've been watching the fences come down section by section and wondering what's actually opening next month, now you know the shape of it: a private club, a hard number, and an entrance that no longer points toward the neighborhood it sits inside.
If you're curious how the Amara reopening affects your specific enclave or want a closer look at what's changing along Flamingo Road, Jen DeBough knows this community from the inside and is happy to walk you through it. Schedule Your Complimentary Consultation.
