If you drive past the Flamingo Road entrance to what used to be Bear's Best, you already know something is happening. Chain-link has replaced the pro shop windows. What was fairway is now graded dirt and stacked pipe. And if you have lived in The Ridges long enough to remember twilight rounds on the back nine, you have probably wondered when you get your course back.
The honest answer is that you do not, not the way it was. Bear's Best took its last public round on June 30, 2025, and the property is not being touched up. It is being torn down and rebuilt from the ground up as something with a different name, a different membership model, and a different reason for existing.
What actually closed, and when
Bear's Best opened in 2001 as a Jack Nicklaus design built around replicas of some of his favorite holes from courses around the world, and it spent more than two decades as one of the defining features of the western Ridges. In 2024, the more than 200-acre property changed hands for $30.5 million, purchased by Mulligan Holdings, a partnership between Andrew Pascal, the CEO of PlayStudios and a former chief operating officer at Wynn Resorts, and Mike Mixer, co-founder of the Las Vegas office of Colliers International. Both men live in The Ridges themselves, which matters for what comes next.
Public play ended that June, and full redevelopment began in September 2025, working with golf course architecture firm Jackson Kahn Design. As of this summer, the site has been under active construction for roughly eleven months, with the new clubhouse footprint taking shape and the entrance off Flamingo Road being reconfigured entirely. The projected reopening is this October, which puts the club roughly two months from its target date as of this writing.
The real reason it isn't reopening as a public course
Here is the part most residents have not connected yet. The decision to convert Bear's Best into a private, membership-capped club was not primarily about creating something nicer. It was about protecting the land itself.
Pascal has been direct about the motivation in interviews, pointing to the Badlands golf course as the cautionary example that shaped his thinking. That Las Vegas course was rezoned for housing after a protracted, expensive legal battle once it sat shuttered and idle. A closed golf course inside a residential community is vulnerable to exactly that kind of pressure. A heavily capitalized, active private club is not.
"We really see this as an opportunity to create something special for the western side of Summerlin," Pascal told the Las Vegas Review-Journal when the sale was announced. The comment reads as optimism on its surface, but the underlying logic is closer to insurance. A $300 million build with a paying membership base is a far harder target for future rezoning than a course sitting empty behind a fence.
That logic explains the membership structure too. Amara Golf Club, as the property is now branded, will cap total membership at 250, plus a small number of additional memberships tied to the fifteen planned clubhouse villas. The initiation fee starts at $250,000 and climbs as membership fills, alongside monthly dues reported near $4,000. That is not pricing designed to maximize volume. It is pricing designed to keep the club small, keep it funded, and keep the green space that borders your own neighborhood permanently off the table for anything else.
The timeline so far
| Milestone | Date |
|---|---|
| Bear's Best takes its last public round | June 30, 2025 |
| Redevelopment officially begins | September 2025 |
| Projected private reopening | October 2026 |
| Clubhouse villas completed | End of 2027 |
What's actually rising behind the fencing
The original Bear's Best played 7,194 yards to a par of 72. The new Amara design, still credited to Nicklaus with Jackson Kahn's collaboration, is being built to roughly 7,229 yards, also a par 72, alongside a new 6-hole par-3 course and golf simulators for practice on days you would rather not play a full round. Water rights for the redesigned course have already been secured, which is one of the clearer signs that this is a funded, permitted build and not a rendering waiting on financing.
The clubhouse itself is planned as a two-level building with underground parking, a spa, a fitness center, a wine lounge, a business center, banquet rooms, and a fine dining restaurant. On the recreation side, plans call for a family pool with cabanas, a smoothie bar, a sports lounge, four pickleball courts, volleyball, and an event lawn large enough for gatherings. None of it is open yet. All of it is currently dirt, framing, and construction fencing if you drive by today.
What this means for your rounds this year
For the next two months at minimum, the course inside your own gates stays closed, and the old clubhouse dining you may have used for a casual Tuesday lunch is not coming back in its old form. If you want golf without leaving Summerlin, the master-planned community still lists several public and semi-private options through its own golf directory, including TPC Las Vegas, Highland Falls Golf Club, and Palm Valley Golf Club, all of which remain open and unaffected by the Amara build.
Around the neighborhood itself, the practical changes are mostly about traffic patterns and sightlines rather than daily inconvenience. The reconfigured entrance off Flamingo Road means the approach into that corner of The Ridges looks different than it did even a year ago, and the construction footprint is large enough that it is visible from several of the fairway-adjacent streets. If you are used to walking or driving past that stretch, expect equipment and fencing through at least the fall, with the villa construction extending the visible work well into 2027.
What to watch for next
October is the number to keep in mind. If the club opens on schedule, it will be the first real test of whether a 250-member private course with a quarter-million-dollar initiation fee can fill out its roster in a market where most golf memberships in the valley cost a fraction of that. Whether it does or not, the bigger point for anyone living inside The Ridges is already settled. That stretch of land bordering your community is not going anywhere, and it is not becoming anything other than a golf course. In a city that has watched at least one shuttered course turn into a courtroom fight over rooftops, that is worth knowing even if you never plan to golf a single round there.
If you are curious about how developments like this affect specific enclaves within The Ridges, or you simply want an informed neighbor's read on what is happening around Summerlin, MS Luxury Homes is always glad to talk it through. Connect with Michele anytime you want the plain-English version of what is actually happening in your own backyard.
