Amara opening watch: October is ending, the club is hiring, and still no date

No question about Las Vegas golf reaches us more often than what happened to Bear's Best. The answer is that it closed to public play on 30 June 2025 and is being rebuilt as Amara Golf and Social Club, private and members-only. The reported target for opening was October 2026. October ends in five days, and nothing has been announced.

So this is a status check, and it is deliberately short on speculation. Here is what is documented, what is only reported, and what is still not public at all.

Update, 26 October 2026

We re-read amaragolf.com on 26 October. The homepage is unchanged: one paragraph, “coming soon”, an interest form, no date. The careers page is not. On 13 September it read “No open positions right now. Check back soon.” It now lists five:

• Assistant Golf Professional — Golf Operations
• Outside Services Lead — Golf Operations
• Outside Services Attendant — Golf Operations
• Front Services Attendant — Club Operations
• Operator — Agronomy

Those are the roles a club fills when it is preparing to receive members on a golf course: a bag drop, a starter's desk, a front door, a crew on the turf. We report that as published and draw no conclusion about a date from it. A club can hire an outside-services team months before it opens, and nothing on the page says when these people start. What it does settle is that the operation is staffing, which six weeks ago it was not.

Everything else below stands. No opening date, season or membership term has been published by the club or its ownership group, and the reported October 2026 target will pass this week without a dated announcement.

Where things stand

The closure is fact: the course stopped taking public tee times on 30 June 2025 after more than two decades as a Summerlin daily-fee property, and it has not taken one since. The site, more than 200 acres west of the I-215 Beltway inside The Ridges, is under new ownership. Mulligan Holdings LLC — Andrew Pascal, co-founder and chief executive of PlayStudios and formerly president and chief operating officer of Wynn Las Vegas, with Mike Mixer, who co-founded Colliers International's Las Vegas operation — is the buyer.

What is reported, not confirmed

Nearly everything else — and there is a lot of it. The $30.5 million purchase price and the $300 million total investment come from reporting by the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the investment figure also carried by Club + Resort Business. Ownership has stated a membership cap of 250 general memberships plus 15 reserved for buyers of the on-site villas. The initiation fee has been reported at $250,000 with monthly dues of approximately $4,000 covering family access to age 25, and initiation is reported to step up at each threshold of 50 memberships sold. Jackson Kahn Design is reported as redesigning the golf course from the ground up, with a six-hole par-3 course and indoor simulators alongside it. The October 2026 opening target comes from the same body of developer statements and secondary reporting.

That is a detailed picture, and it may well be an accurate one. It is also, without exception, second-hand. The club has a website, and none of those figures is on it. No announcement, no membership prospectus, no rate of any kind. We label them reported throughout our coverage for that reason, and we will keep labelling them that way until a first-hand source exists.

The distinction matters more than it sounds. A reported target and an announced opening date are different objects, and every time the first gets repeated as the second, the web gets a little less reliable. Most of the pages currently answering "when does Amara open" state October 2026 flatly.

What the club itself says

Amara has a website. amaragolf.com is live, and read on 13 September 2026 it carries one paragraph of substance:

Amara Golf & Social Club is an invitation to gather, play, and live fully in each moment you are with us. But more than a place, it is an experience defined by a rare mix of ease and elegance. And that experience is coming soon.

That is the whole of it. No opening date, no season, no membership categories, no initiation figure, no course information, no photographs of the site. There is an interest form — name, address, how you heard about Amara, and a checklist of what you love, from “a glorious round of golf” to “fine wine and fireside conversations” — which collects enquiries and promises a personal follow-up. It asks for a sponsor name, optionally, which tells you the membership is expected to run partly on referral.

The careers page, read the same day in September, said: “No open positions right now. Check back soon.” That has since changed; see the 26 October update above. The homepage has not.

What has not been published

As of 26 October 2026, with the reported opening month almost over, we have not been able to find:

• A dated announcement. Not a month, not a season, not a soft-opening window. The October 2026 figure is a target reported in 2024–25 coverage and repeated since. Nobody has restated or revised it this year that we can find.
• Anything dated on the club's own site. amaragolf.com is live and says the experience is “coming soon”. There is an interest form. There is no date, no season, and no membership information of any kind.
• A first-hand source for any of the membership terms. The $250,000 initiation, the $4,000 dues and the 265-member cap are consistent across the coverage, which is some evidence they are right, and no evidence at all of where they came from originally.
• A look at the golf course. The 18 Nicklaus replica holes are gone. Jackson Kahn Design is reported as the architect, but no routing, par, yardage or imagery of the rebuilt layout has been shown publicly.

For a $300 million club at the end of its reported opening month, that is a notably quiet posture. It is also a defensible one. Clubs at this level routinely fill a founding membership entirely by invitation and never market publicly at all; if the 265 memberships are spoken for, there is nobody left to advertise to. A silent launch is not evidence of a delayed one. It is simply not evidence of anything, which is the whole reason to track it rather than guess at it.

What we are watching for

Four things would each move this from reported to published, and we check for them:

1. A date, a season, or any membership detail appearing on amaragolf.com, which currently carries none.
2. A dated opening announcement from the ownership group.
3. Membership terms from a first-hand source — a filing, a prospectus, a broker listing inside The Ridges — that would move the reported figures to confirmed.
4. The course itself: routing, par and yardage for the Jackson Kahn layout, or any imagery of it.

Until one of those lands, the honest answer to "when does Amara open" is that nobody outside the ownership group knows, and the most-quoted date is a target reported two years ago. We would rather say that than repeat a date as though it were confirmed — which is, at the moment, what most of the web is doing.

Our full account of the Bear's Best sale and the Amara plan →

Frequently asked questions

When does Amara Golf and Social Club open?

No opening date has been published by the club or its ownership group. October 2026 has been widely repeated as the target, but that figure comes from Las Vegas Review-Journal reporting rather than a club announcement, and as of 26 October 2026, with the month almost over, no dated announcement has been made.

Can the public play Amara Golf and Social Club?

No. Amara is planned as a strictly private, members-only club. Bear's Best Las Vegas, the public course that occupied the site, stopped taking public tee times on 30 June 2025 and will not reopen to daily-fee play.

How much does Amara membership cost?

Reported at a $250,000 initiation fee plus monthly dues of approximately $4,000, which are said to cover family access including dependents to age 25. Initiation is reported to step up at each threshold of 50 memberships sold. Membership is capped at 265 — 250 general plus 15 reserved for buyers of the on-site villas. Every one of those figures comes from developer statements and press reporting rather than from the club itself, so treat them as reported and verify directly before acting on them.

Has Amara Golf and Social Club announced anything officially?

Barely. The club's own site, amaragolf.com, is live, but as of 26 October 2026 it says only that the experience is coming soon — no opening date, no season, and no membership information. It carries an interest form. Its careers page, which read 'No open positions right now' on 13 September, listed five open positions on 26 October: Assistant Golf Professional, Outside Services Lead, Outside Services Attendant, Front Services Attendant and an Agronomy Operator. Everything else known about the opening date, the membership terms and the course design traces back to developer statements and secondary reporting, which is why we label all of it reported rather than confirmed.

What happened to Bear's Best Las Vegas?

It was sold in 2024 to Mulligan Holdings LLC, reportedly for $30.5 million, closed to public play on 30 June 2025, and is being redeveloped as the private Amara Golf and Social Club under a reported $300 million total investment. The plan described was demolition and a rebuild rather than a renovation, so the 18 Nicklaus replica holes are gone.

Who owns Amara Golf and Social Club?

Mulligan Holdings LLC, whose principals are Andrew Pascal — co-founder and chief executive of PlayStudios and a former president and chief operating officer of Wynn Las Vegas — and Mike Mixer, co-founder of Colliers International's Las Vegas operation.

Published September 12, 2026 and updated October 26, 2026 by the Summerlin Golf Editorial Team. Every figure on this page was read from the operator's own website on the date stated and is quoted as published. Golf course conditions, closures and rates change without notice — check with the course before you travel. More from the journal.