Los Amigos Closed After 53 Years. Here's What You Can (and Can't) Walk Into Now.

For more than five decades, the deck at the base of Gondola One belonged to whoever wanted a pitcher of Coors and a plate of nachos after a day on the hill. As Vail Magazine reported, Los Amigos held that corner of Bridge Street since long before most current residents bought their first place in the valley, closing in April 2026 after 53 years in business. The building didn't sit empty for long. What moved into that footprint is not another cantina. It's a 62-member alpine club with a restaurant attached, and the distinction between the two is the part worth understanding if you live here and plan to keep walking past that corner on your way to the gondola.

What Actually Replaced It

The new occupant is called THE SIXTY TWO Society, and the name is a deliberate nod to 1962, the year Vail Mountain opened. It's the project of Brad Kaemmer, a Vail Mountain School graduate from the class of 1990 who grew up in the building trade his parents built. John and Julie Kaemmer arrived in Vail in the mid-1960s and opened the London Bar and Grille, which later became the Clock Tower Inn. Over the following decades the family's businesses rotated through that stretch of Bridge Street: Pistachio's, later renamed Vendetta's, and La Piñata, which eventually became Los Amigos. They also ran the Toy Store and a children's clothing shop called the Velveteen Rabbit. Kaemmer spent three decades building and selling restaurant concepts outside Vail. The project is a members-only dining and social club capped at 62 memberships.

The build carries a reported $9 million price tag, and the club's own hiring postings this July pointed to a mid-September 2026 opening.

The Membership Fee Doesn't Apply to the Table

Here's the detail that gets lost when a 53-year-old local hangout gets replaced by something with the word "Society" in its name: you don't need a membership to eat there. The restaurant is intended to be open to the public for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and après. What the one-time joining fee actually buys is priority in the reservation queue, access to a private lounge called the Society Suite, ski valet service run through Gorsuch, complimentary SUV transportation, and a rotating slate of member-only events. If you just want a meal at the base of the mountain, the door is open the same way it always was. If you want the lounge, the storage, and the car service, that's the part reserved for 62 households.

That split matters for how the space actually functions day to day. A walk-in diner and a dues-paying member will eat in the same room, possibly at neighboring tables, with different levels of access to everything around the edges of that meal.

Why the Entrance Move Matters More Than the Menu

The bigger change for anyone who uses Bridge Street as a daily route isn't the concept, it's the geometry. Kaemmer relocated the building's main entrance away from Bridge Street itself and over to the Gondola One plaza, and negotiated directly with Vail Resorts to build a new public fire pit on land between the old entrance and the gondola base that wasn't previously part of the restaurant's footprint. The old sunny deck where the village used to watch skiers finish runs down Pepi's Face is gone. In its place is an enclosed patio and a reoriented dining room built to face the mountain rather than the sidewalk.

Here's the shift laid out plainly:

The practical effect is that the pedestrian flow at the top of Bridge Street has been redrawn. People who used to cut past the deck on their way to the gondola plaza now walk past a relocated front door and a new fire pit that didn't exist in that spot a year ago. If your habit was to glance at the deck to see who was out, that habit needs updating, not because the crowd changed, but because the building's face changed direction.

A Building That Ties Itself to the Address, Not Just the Name

One more wrinkle worth knowing, even if it's not the headline: the club has structured its memberships so they can transfer with the sale of the home they're attached to, similar to how signature club access works around some of Vail Resorts' own developments. That's not a reason to buy or sell anything. It's simply a design choice that means the 62-membership cap and the address itself are more linked than a typical restaurant reservation ever was. For residents, the relevant takeaway isn't the transfer mechanism, it's that access to that corner of the village is now capped in a way it never was when Los Amigos was pouring pitchers for whoever showed up.

None of this changes what's still true about that corner of the village: it's still the gateway to Gondola One, still the spot where the ski day starts and ends for a huge share of Vail Village residents, and still worth a look even if you never join anything. The restaurant is intended to welcome public diners. The fire pit is public. What's different is everything just past the hostess stand.

If you're a resident who wants a closer read on how the rest of the Vail Village walking loop has shifted this year, including what's changed a few doors down at the Sebastian, that's worth a separate look. And if watching a 53-year-old address get reimagined has you thinking about your own property's place in the village, whether as a primary home, a second home, or something you're weighing selling, Jeff McAbee knows this stretch of Bridge Street as well as anyone working in the valley right now. Schedule a consultation when you're ready to talk through what a corner like this means for your own address.

This article is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice. Consult a qualified professional about your situation.