This October, the golf course that gave The Ridges its identity for two decades reopens under a new name, and the first thing many new homeowners will discover is that owning the house doesn't come with a tee time anymore. That's a real reversal, and it's worth stating plainly before anyone compares square footage or HOA line items.
A few miles away in the guard-gated Summit, the arrangement runs the opposite direction. You cannot join Summit Club at all unless you already own property inside its gates, but ownership alone still doesn't make the invoice disappear. Between these two communities, Summerlin now offers two very different answers to a question every relocating buyer eventually asks about a guard-gated golf address: what exactly did the price of the house buy?
What Changes at The Ridges This Month
Bear's Best Las Vegas, the Jack Nicklaus design that opened in 2001 and became the defining amenity of The Ridges, played its last public round on June 22, 2025. Mulligan Holdings, led by PlayStudios chief executive and former Wynn Resorts chief operating officer Andrew Pascal along with Colliers International Las Vegas co-founder Mike Mixer, had purchased the course in 2024 for $30.5 million. What follows is a $300 million rebuild into Amara Golf Club, a members-only course with a target reopening this October, according to reporting in the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
Membership is capped at 265 total, 250 general memberships plus 15 reserved for the club's planned villa owners. Initiation starts at $250,000 and increases with every 50 memberships sold. Monthly dues run near $4,000 and extend to family access, including children up to age 25.
None of that comes bundled with a Ridges home purchase. Villa ownership at Amara does not automatically include club membership, and the same holds for any single-family home in the community's twelve guard-gated enclaves, whether it backs the 18th fairway or sits three streets away. The one real transaction-side benefit: buying a Ridges home from a current Amara member moves the new buyer to the front of the membership waitlist. That's a queue position, not a transfer.
Why Scarce Beats Bundled
Pascal and Mixer both live in The Ridges, and their stated reason for buying the course had less to do with golf than with land use. The Badlands course in nearby Queensridge had closed and then spent years in costly rezoning litigation after a developer tried to convert the shuttered fairways into housing, a fight Club + Resort Business described as a cautionary tale the new Ridges owners wanted to avoid entirely.
Converting the acreage into a functioning, revenue-generating private club with capped, expensive membership does something a public course never could: it removes the incentive for anyone to argue the land would be better used as home sites. A waitlist that moves slowly is not a design flaw here. It's the mechanism that keeps 200-plus acres of prime Summerlin real estate permanently zoned for fairways instead of foundations.
The Summit's Different Bargain
Summit Club runs on the opposite logic. Developed jointly by Discovery Land Company and Howard Hughes Corporation across 555 acres, the community's Tom Fazio-designed 18-hole course is restricted entirely to homeowners. You cannot buy your way into membership without first buying property inside the gates. That exclusivity is part of what draws relocating executives, athletes, and entertainers, several of whom own homes there.
But restricted access isn't the same as included access. Reported figures on Summit Club membership vary by source and year, which itself says something about how little the club publishes. Estimates place the initiation fee anywhere from roughly $200,000 up into the $250,000 to $400,000 range, with annual club dues reported anywhere from about $39,000 to well over $100,000 depending on which year's estimate you find, plus separate homeowner association dues that alone can run $25,000 to $34,000 a year depending on residence type. A buyer closing on a Summit home should expect a six-figure membership conversation before the club portion of the ledger is settled.
The Summit's most visible transaction this year illustrates the stakes at that price level. A newly built estate at 10911 Discovery Peak Court closed for $22.5 million in late February 2026, the top Las Vegas-area sale of the year so far, according to public filings reported by Hoodline. The 11,974-square-foot home on roughly an acre was sold by Dallas-based developer Robert Elliott Custom Homes to a buyer recorded as a Delaware LLC, a structure common among buyers who value privacy in the paperwork as much as behind the gate. Even at that level, the listing had originally been marketed in the high $20 millions and needed several price adjustments and months on market before it closed. Scale doesn't exempt a sale from negotiation.
| The Summit | The Ridges | |
|---|---|---|
| Guard-gated footprint | 555 acres | 793 acres, 12 enclaves |
| Golf course | Tom Fazio design, private since opening | Formerly Bear's Best, reopening as Amara this October |
| Membership tied to home ownership | Yes, homeowners only | No, sold and waitlisted separately |
| Reported membership cost | Roughly $200K to $400K initiation, plus $39K to $120K+ annual dues and $25K-$34K/yr HOA | $250K initiation (rising every 50 sold), roughly $4,000 monthly dues |
| 2026 home price range | Finished homes planned from $8M to $40M, premium lots listed as high as $28.5M | Attached condos from roughly $680K, custom estates above $13M in Azure |
What the Median Price Doesn't Tell You
The Ridges is also a useful reminder that a single median price rarely means what it seems to. One dataset covering closed sales pegs the Q1 2026 median near $2.95 million, up 6.4 percent year over year. A separate set of transaction records covering 2024 and trailing 2025 activity puts the more recent 12-month median closer to $4.4 million at roughly $813 per square foot, with three Azure enclave sales in 2025 alone trading between $13.5 million and $16 million. That's not really a contradiction. It's a sign that a community stretching from a $680,000 Fairway Hills condo up through $16 million Azure estates will report a wildly different median depending on which enclave happens to close in a given quarter.
The Summit doesn't offer that kind of range to compare against. There is no attached-home entry point inside its gates. Planned inventory across the community's full build-out runs from $8 million to $40 million for finished homes on one to three acre lots, and this year's most notable available lot, a 2.7-acre parcel, was marketed at $28.5 million on its own. For a buyer weighing price flexibility as heavily as prestige, that gap between communities may settle the conversation before club dues ever come up.
Timing It Around October
A buyer who closes on a Ridges home before Amara's October reopening is buying into a community where the signature amenity isn't yet operating and where final membership terms are still settling into public view. A buyer who closes after reopening will see a functioning club, clearer pricing, and likely a longer waitlist, since fairway-fronting homesites are widely expected to see appreciation once the course and clubhouse are complete. Neither moment is the wrong one. They simply favor different buyers, one who wants to lock in a home price ahead of a finished amenity, the other who wants certainty over anticipation.
A Few Direct Questions
Does buying a home in The Ridges include Amara Golf Club membership? No. Membership is sold and waitlisted separately from real estate, even for the club's own villa residences.
Can someone join Summit Club without owning property there? No. Membership is restricted entirely to homeowners inside the community's gates, though ownership alone doesn't cover the separate initiation and dues costs.
Is there an entry-level home in The Summit comparable to a Ridges condo? Not currently. Summit's planned inventory starts around $8 million for finished homes, while The Ridges offers attached product from the high $600,000s.
Comparing two communities this different takes more than a spreadsheet of list prices. It takes knowing which numbers are published, which are estimated, and which only show up once you're sitting across the table during a transaction. That's the kind of groundwork Greg Clemens and his team walk Summerlin buyers through before they ever tour a gate. If you're weighing a move into one of these communities this fall, reach out and let's talk through what the numbers actually mean for your situation.
