My wife and I are considering joining Black Hawk CC. Are any of y'all members or former members? We're trying to do our due diligence before making a decision one way or another, and would love to hear from anyone with first hand experiences.

Been a member for several years and I'm considering leaving. The place has consistently gone downhill since Escalante bought it. Long story short the place is operated on a shoestring budget and it shows. The greens need to be replaced in a bad way, but the only way that's going to happen is if we have another Harvey situation and they get a bunch of insurance money (which is the only reason the clubhouse was finally updated and repaired). They've probably added close to 100 new members this year I think because they've slashed the initiation fee (what are they quoting you, out of curiosity?), but they always claim they still have memberships available. It used to be pretty easy to play a 3-3.5 hr round on the weekends. Those days are long gone. It used to be a great place and it's a shame what Escalante has done by sucking money out of there to subsidize their numerous properties that are sucking wind.

They quoted $18k for a Jr Membership (under 40). I can't recall on the full charter membership, but I think it was $25-30k.

Thanks for the information.

I think it is quite a bit but how much more is Shadow Hawk?

I am not a member so won't be much help but a handful of our upper management are Shadow Hawk members and every time I play out there I always love how not busy it is. I know Black Hawk is much busier though... They were all members at BH but they apparently offered our company a pretty good deal to upgrade SH.

edit: not sure why the angry face - didn't try to do that.

SH is over 100k. Membership is capped at 225, but they are not quite at that number currently. Yes, SH is a very quiet course, you can often play and hardly see other people playing.

I've played BH a few times. It's a nice course, just more crowded, and lacking the pampering you get at SH.

Edit: SH has quite a few "older" folks who don't play during the heat of summer or only play 9 holes. Why summer golf is so quiet there.

my family has a corporate membership at SH. longtime BH members but they offered a sweet deal to upgrade to SH and we took it.

basically, BH has gone downhill for a number of reasons, and directly because redstone sold out to escalante. the story is the redstone courses have been the most profitable of the escalante properties and they use the profits to help out the hemorrhaging courses in other places. it has had a direct negative impact on BH, but not SH. BH has become too crowded on the weekends and has not been kept up to its previous levels. greens badly need replacing and membership is just too high now. i think they offered the BH members a sweet deal to move to SH because they werent filling up the SH membership and could open up spots for new BH members.

I know there were a bunch of people that moved from BH to SH early this year because they were offering a "good" deal, but I don't understand how that many people fell for the Escalante sales pitch. Basically I assume it was "we know that you're unhappy with the way we've run things at BH, but if you'll just cut us another large 5 figure check we PROMISE we won't screw it up this time." It just never made sense to me why the solution to being unhappy at BH was to give more money to the people who ruined it.

The Grey Patch said:

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I know there were a bunch of people that moved from BH to SH early this year because they were offering a "good" deal, but I don't understand how that many people fell for the Escalante sales pitch. Basically I assume it was "we know that you're unhappy with the way we've run things at BH, but if you'll just cut us another large 5 figure check we PROMISE we won't screw it up this time." It just never made sense to me why the solution to being unhappy at BH was to give more money to the people who ruined it.

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they treat SH and its members different. maybe they will screw it up one day, maybe not, but 3 hr rounds on a saturday morning and the driving range going with the sun in the afternoons sure makes a difference. plus theyve already said when BH does redo the greens, the members will not be coming to SH.

I'm a member at BH but hardly ever play these days. I've been offered deals to join SH repeatedly but it has never seemed like that great of a deal to me (pretty much in line with what they offered me prior to joining BH). Do you mind sharing what they offered?