Drive along Flamingo Road toward the western edge of the 215 Beltway these days and the view has changed. Where Bear's Best Las Vegas used to send golf carts winding past black volcanic-sand bunkers, there is now a construction fence, earthmoving equipment, and a sign that reads Amara Golf & Social Club. The course took its last public tee time on June 30, 2025. It has not reopened since, and it will not reopen the way it closed.
For anyone who has watched a Las Vegas golf course go dark before, that silence usually triggers a specific kind of dread. A shuttered course means acreage, and acreage near a gated luxury community tends to attract one of two outcomes: reinvestment, or a rezoning fight. Residents of The Ridges have a nearby example of the second outcome that they do not need explained to them. The Badlands golf course spent years tied up in litigation after a developer tried to convert the shuttered fairways into housing, a fight the city of Las Vegas eventually settled for hundreds of millions of dollars after losing repeatedly in court, according to Las Vegas Review-Journal reporting. That case is the reference point every homeowner near a closed course in this valley measures new news against.
Here is the detail that changes the read on what's happening behind the Amara fence: the people behind this project have said, on the record, that the Badlands outcome is exactly what they are building against.
Why Going Private Was The Point
Bear's Best sold in 2024 for $30.5 million to Mulligan Holdings, a company led by Andrew Pascal and Mike Mixer, both of whom live in The Ridges themselves. Pascal spent years as president and chief operating officer of Wynn Las Vegas before co-founding the gaming company PlayStudios. Mixer co-founded the Colliers International office in Las Vegas. Neither is a stranger to how Las Vegas real estate deals get made or unmade.
When the Review-Journal asked Pascal about the decision to convert a public course into a private, membership-capped club, he pointed directly at Badlands as the scenario he wanted to close off. Converting Bear's Best into a $300 million private club with a capped membership and a permanent golf easement makes a future rezoning attempt functionally pointless. There is no shuttered, undervalued parcel sitting idle waiting for a developer's pitch. There is a fully capitalized, member-owned club with every incentive to keep operating exactly as designed.
That is the piece of this story that a drive-by doesn't tell you. The fence isn't a warning sign. It's the opposite of one.
What's Actually Under Construction Right Now
The course being rebuilt behind that fence is not the same Bear's Best that opened in 2001. Jack Nicklaus originally designed it as a tribute course, hand-selecting eighteen of his favorite holes from other Nicklaus designs around the country, including replicas drawn from La Campana in Santa Fe and La Paloma in Tucson. That layout is gone. According to the course's own GolfPass listing, the 2025 redesign architect of record is Jackson Kahn Design, a golf course architecture firm, working from the same 200-plus acre footprint but building a different course inside it.
Redevelopment officially began in September 2025, per the timeline confirmed by golf industry tracker GolfTrailsHQ, and construction has continued through this year across the full width of the old course. Three physical changes will matter most to anyone who lives nearby:
- The main vehicle entrance is being rebuilt off Flamingo Road, replacing the club's old access point.
- The former driving range is being converted into a new six-hole par-3 course, paired with golf simulators for year-round practice.
- The clubhouse is being fully rebuilt as a two-level structure with underground parking, replacing the original building entirely rather than renovating it.
None of this is a facelift. It is a teardown and a rebuild on the same land, which is exactly what a $300 million budget on a 200-acre site implies.
The Old Club And The New One, Side By Side
The shift from Bear's Best to Amara isn't only architectural. It's a shift in who gets to walk through the gate at all.
| Bear's Best (2001–2025) | Amara Golf & Social Club (opening 2026–27) | |
|---|---|---|
| Access | Public daily-fee course | Private, members-only |
| Membership cap | None, open to any paying golfer | 250 general memberships plus 15 reserved for villa owners |
| Initiation cost | Standard greens fee only | Starting at $250,000, rising every 50 memberships sold |
| Practice facility | 75,000-square-foot driving range | Six-hole par-3 course plus golf simulators |
| Clubhouse | Single-level, original 2001 structure | Two-level rebuild with underground parking |
The address at 11111 W. Flamingo Rd. hasn't moved. Almost everything else has.
The Timeline Isn't As Settled As It Sounds
Most projections through the first half of 2026 pointed to an October 2026 reopening for the club itself, with the 15 planned villas following by the end of 2027. That October target lines up almost exactly with where the calendar sits right now. But the most recently published estimate available this summer pushed the opening language toward "2027" rather than a firm fall 2026 date, which suggests the schedule has already slipped at least once since the original announcement.
That gap matters more to someone who lives fifty yards from the fence than to a golf trade publication. If the reopening lands this fall, residents should expect member traffic, event lighting, and landscaping crews returning to a site that has sat mostly quiet for over a year. If it slips again, the fence, the earthwork, and the rerouted entrance will simply be the neighborhood's status quo a while longer.
What Comes Back, Eventually
When Amara does open its doors, the plans on record describe a club built around more than golf. The rebuilt clubhouse is designed to include a spa, a fitness center, a wine lounge, banquet rooms, and a fine-dining restaurant, alongside a family pool with cabanas, a smoothie bar, four pickleball courts, and an event lawn. The golf side keeps the championship course alongside that new par-3 layout and simulator bays, a combination built for members who want a quick evening round as much as a full eighteen.
None of that will be open to the public. The course that hosted convention groups and out-of-town golfers for two decades is becoming something residents of The Ridges will only see from the outside, unless they hold a membership themselves. For neighbors who valued the openness of a daily-fee course backing their fence, that's a real trade-off. For neighbors who valued the certainty that the green space stays green space, the membership wall is the entire point.
Either way, what's rising behind that fence on Flamingo Road isn't a question mark anymore. It's a fully financed answer to the one question every homeowner near a shuttered Las Vegas golf course eventually asks.
Watching a project like this unfold from the outside is one thing. Understanding what it actually means for a specific address inside The Ridges takes someone who tracks these changes as they happen, not after the fact. The Avi Dan-Goor Group works inside gated communities like this one every week. If you want a clear-eyed read on how a change like Amara affects your own corner of the neighborhood, request a private consultation and let's talk through it directly.
