Amara Golf Club Reopens in October. Here's What Actually Changes Inside The Ridges.

For more than a year now, the crest above Flamingo Road has looked less like a golf course and more like a construction site with a very good view. Bear's Best Las Vegas, the Jack Nicklaus design that opened to the public in 2001 and anchored the identity of The Ridges for two decades, closed in June 2025. By the time it reopens this October, the closure will have run sixteen months start to finish. What comes back is not that course. It's Amara Golf Club, a $300 million rebuild with a new name, a new membership structure, and a much smaller circle of people who'll ever set foot inside.

That distinction matters more to the people who already live here than any appreciation forecast. If you've spent the past year driving past the earthwork on your way in and out of the gate, here's what the calendar actually holds, and what it doesn't.

What Actually Opens This Fall

The reopening date circulating among Ridges residents and Summerlin watchers is October 2026, roughly two months from now. But "reopening" covers only part of what's under construction on the 200-plus acres off Flamingo Road. The residential piece, 15 club villas on lots ranging from 11,300 to 24,520 square feet, isn't expected to finish until the end of 2027.

So the view from the fairway-facing streets changes this fall. The construction fencing along the villa sites does not.

The Course Was Public. The Club Isn't.

This is the part easy to miss if you only skim the headlines. Bear's Best was a public course. Anyone could book a tee time, and for over two decades plenty of Ridges residents did, along with visitors staying elsewhere in Summerlin. Amara is capped at 265 total memberships, 250 general plus 15 reserved for villa owners, and that membership isn't set aside for people who already live inside the gates. It's open to any qualified buyer across the valley.

The Ridges itself holds roughly 380 homes and homesites spread across its enclaves. Even in the unlikely event every membership went to a current Ridges owner, most households still wouldn't get one. In practice, Amara will draw interest from across Summerlin and beyond, which means the golf course rebuilding at the edge of your neighborhood is being built for a regional clientele, not a neighborhood one.

The irony is that the two men behind the project actually do live here. Andrew Pascal, the former Wynn Resorts COO and current PlayStudios CEO, and Mike Mixer, co-founder of Colliers International, bought the course through their company Mulligan Holdings for $30.5 million in 2024. In reporting from the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Pascal explained the two of them saw it as a chance to build something for the western side of Summerlin.

We really see this as an opportunity to create something special for the western side of Summerlin.

That framing is worth sitting with. The club is being built by neighbors, for a membership that will mostly come from outside the neighborhood.

What Membership Costs, If You Want In

If you're curious what it takes to actually use the amenity going up next door, the numbers are public even though the club isn't. Initiation starts at $250,000 and increases with every 50 memberships sold, so the price for a slot rises as the club fills. Monthly dues run around $4,000 and cover family access, including children up to age 25. Payment is typically structured as a 50 percent holding retainer up front, with the remaining half due once the golf course is completed.

That last detail is a small but telling piece of the timeline. Members who commit now are effectively pre-paying for a facility that, on the golf side, will be finished within weeks of their second payment coming due. It also means the membership rolls will likely fill fastest in the months right around the October opening, when the product stops being a rendering and starts being a golf course you can walk.

The Turn Off Flamingo Road

The change most residents will actually feel day to day has nothing to do with membership. The entrance to the property is being reconfigured off Flamingo Road as part of the rebuild, with the new clubhouse positioned to work with that entry rather than the old Bear's Best access point. If your daily route in or out of The Ridges runs anywhere near that stretch, expect the traffic pattern to look different by the time the ribbon comes down.

This lands hardest for the enclaves that sit closest to the fairways. Falcon Ridge and Silver Ridge both back directly onto the golf corridor, and a newer enclave adjacent to Club Ridges, with roughly 60 homesites, was built specifically with views of what was Bear's Best and is now Amara. Homeowners in these pockets have had a golf course view under construction for over a year. Come October, they'll have a finished one, framed by a clubhouse and entry sequence that didn't exist before.

What This Means If You Already Live Here

None of this requires a decision from current owners. Nobody has to join, and nobody's home value changes because of what's written here. But if you've been assuming the neighborhood simply gets its golf course back this fall, it's worth adjusting that picture. What's actually returning is a private facility with a six-figure door charge, built on the footprint of a course that used to be open to anyone with a tee time.

What you will notice without paying a cent is the traffic pattern shift off Flamingo Road, the finished clubhouse replacing over a year of visible construction, and, if your street backs to the fairways, a view that finally stops changing week to week. The villas will keep the construction fencing up through next year, so the full picture of Amara won't really settle until sometime in 2027.

If you're weighing what any of this means for your own plans in The Ridges, whether that's timing a sale around the reopening or simply understanding how the neighborhood is shifting, the team at Elevate Real Estate Group tracks these local changes as they happen, not after the fact. Reach out anytime you want a straight read on what's actually happening in your corner of Summerlin.