For most of its history, Mira Vista Country Club played the same golf course Tom Weiskopf and Jay Morrish drew up in 1987. Greens got mowed, irrigation lines got patched, but nobody touched the bones of the layout. A few minutes north at the Shops at Clearfork, the dining lineup told a similar story of sameness: B&B Butchers from Houston, Mesero from Dallas, Fixe from Austin, one national or regional name after another, with barely a Fort Worth kitchen in the mix.
Both of those patterns broke in roughly the same 18 months. That is worth sitting with if you already live behind the Mira Vista gates, because it means the two places that shape most of your daily radius, the club and the corridor just outside it, are having their first real overhaul at the same time, for reasons that have nothing to do with each other.
The Club's First Rebuild Since 1987
In October 2024, Mira Vista's board signed off on a $20 million course renovation led by architect Andy Staples, the first comprehensive rebuild since the course opened. The project reworked nearly every green surround, added native grasses to the secondary rough, removed trees that had crowded fairways for decades, and replaced the irrigation system outright. One reviewer who has played the redone layout for Golf Digest described the new greens complexes as adding "far more undulation" to a course that had played the same way for nearly forty years. The course reopened in the fall of 2025, and this spring the trade publication Golf Inc. named it its 2026 Renovation of the Year.
The most visible new piece sits where the old practice green used to be: a 28,000-square-foot Himalayas-style putting course called The Ridge, lit for play after dark with an outdoor bar built into it. It is the kind of amenity that turns a quick stop at the club into an actual evening rather than a stop on the way home.
The renovation also got its first real test from outside members. In February, the JPS Foundation announced it would hold its inaugural JPS Golf Classic at Mira Vista on April 13, a fundraiser supporting oncology care at JPS Health Network. Up to 120 golfers played that day, and the tournament marked one of the first outside events run on the new course, which says something about how quickly the renovation went from finished to functional.
Friday Nights at the Horizon Lounge
Not every change at the club required an architect. The Horizon Lounge and Patio, which overlooks the 18th hole and catches the last of the western sky most evenings, runs full menu service and live music on Friday nights, a more casual counterpart to the white-tablecloth Sunset Grill and a step up from The Pointe's sandwich counter for golfers making the turn. If you have not eaten there on a Friday since the course reopened, the patio now looks out over a genuinely different back nine than it did two years ago.
Clearfork Broke Its Own Pattern Too
The Shops at Clearfork built its reputation on imported names. That changed this year in two moves that had nothing to do with each other on paper but landed in the same building. In May, Wells Fargo opened its new Fort Worth headquarters inside the newly completed Offices at Clearfork, at Marathon Avenue and Ozona Boulevard, occupying nearly two floors of the building and relocating out of downtown, according to Fort Worth Report. A month later, chef Marcus Paslay announced that Piattello Italian Kitchen, his from-scratch Italian restaurant that has run out of Waterside for nearly a decade, would anchor the ground floor of that same building. It becomes Clearfork's first locally owned restaurant in a lineup that has otherwise leaned on national and regional brands.
"We're only moving about a mile down the road," Paslay said of the move, framing it as a chance to keep serving the same customers from a bigger kitchen. The new space will run 5,620 square feet, seat about 160 inside with 40 more on the patio, and add lunch service seven days a week for the first time in the restaurant's history. It is scheduled to open in November, a few months before Piattello marks ten years in business.
The Same Stretch of Calendar
Nothing about the club's renovation and Piattello's move required the other to happen. But laid out on a calendar, the sequence looks less like two unrelated stories and more like a neighborhood where its two anchor institutions both decided, independently, that it was time to stop coasting on what they built decades ago.
| When | What changed |
|---|---|
| Oct. 2024 | Mira Vista's board approves a $20 million course renovation, the first full rebuild since 1987 |
| Fall 2025 | The redesigned course reopens with new greens, tees, and The Ridge putting course |
| Feb. 2026 | The JPS Foundation announces its inaugural Golf Classic at Mira Vista for April |
| Apr. 13, 2026 | Up to 120 golfers play the JPS Golf Classic, one of the first outside events on the new course |
| May 2026 | Wells Fargo opens its Fort Worth headquarters inside the Offices at Clearfork |
| May/June 2026 | Golf Inc. names Mira Vista's renovation its 2026 Renovation of the Year |
| June 2026 | Piattello announces its move to Clearfork, the center's first locally owned restaurant |
| Aug. 10 to Sept. 7, 2026 | DFW Restaurant Week runs at the Shops at Clearfork |
| Nov. 2026 | Piattello opens in its new Clearfork space |
What's Actually Open Right Now
If you want a reason to go tonight rather than wait for November, DFW Restaurant Week started today at Clearfork and runs through September 7, with participating restaurants offering fixed-price menus and proceeds benefiting the North Texas Food Bank and Lena Pope. City Works follows a week later with its own Burger Week, running August 17 through 23, featuring a Hawaiian Guajillo Burger among the seasonal specials. Piattello will not have moved into its new home by the time either event wraps, but the current Waterside location is still open for anyone who wants a decade's worth of pasta and wood-fired pizza before the address changes.
Getting Outside Without Any of This
Mira Vista sits on the eastern shore of Benbrook Lake, and for residents who want a longer walk than the club grounds offer, Pecan Valley Park is the closest option with real trail mileage, including the Art Cowsen Trailhead, which ties into the Trinity Trail System's roughly 100 miles of connected paths across Fort Worth. None of that changed this year, and it did not need to. The lake and the trail were already good before anyone touched a putting green or signed a lease.
Two years ago, a Friday night at Mira Vista meant the same course it had always been and a short list of chain restaurants at Clearfork. Neither of those things is generic anymore, and neither change came out of a marketing plan. A club board spent $20 million because the course needed it. A chef took a bet on a bigger kitchen because a decade at Waterside had run its course. Read together, they say something about where Fort Worth's southwest side is headed that no single press release would.
If the renovation talk has you thinking about what a home near Mira Vista is actually worth now that both anchors have changed, Willoughby Agency knows this stretch of Fort Worth from the course to the curb. Schedule a Private Consultation whenever you are ready to talk specifics.
