Rapid City SD- Nine days after the City of Rapid City signed three contracts to demolish the condemned garages at Star Village, the property’s owner tried to muscle back into a process it had already forfeited — filing its own demolition permits, only 18 of 28 of them, only after the city had already moved on without it. The council wasn’t interested. Neither was the mayor.
Here’s what happened at the July 20, 2026 council meeting, and why it matters more than a routine vote on contractor paperwork.
Tzadik Filed Permits on Friday
Community Development Director Vicki Fisher told the council she’d put them on notice the previous Friday, July 17: a representative from Tzadik had contacted her office to say the company would be submitting its own demolition permits to remove the Star Village garages, believing it would be a cost savings — for Tzadik, the property owner, not for the city.
The stated intent, according to Fisher, was to have every permit completed and in hand before tonight’s meeting.
It didn’t happen.
As of the meeting, Tzadik had submitted 18 of the 28 permits needed. Ten were still missing. Fisher’s office recommended the council move forward with the city’s own contracts anyway, as a backstop, in case the structures weren’t removed under Tzadik’s permits by August 7.
The city’s three demolition contracts — with Ridgeline Construction, MMI LLC, and HC LLC, totaling $133,500 to remove all 28 garages — had already been signed on July 8. Tzadik’s permit push came more than a week later, and even then, arrived incomplete.
“The same kind of tactic we’ve seen before”
Council President Stephen Tamang used the moment to put something else on the record: Tzadik had contacted the city through a man named Mitch Richter, who represented himself as handling “special projects” for Tzadik.
Tamang said South Dakota’s Secretary of State lists Richter as an active registered private lobbyist, and that a separate lobbying-industry database, Lobbylink, lists Tzadik management among his clients.
Richter is a real, credentialed lobbyist — a former South Dakota state representative for District 11 (1995–2003) and a Rapid City resident, he holds an active 2026 registration with the SD Secretary of State, No. 110616. But the state record complicates Tamang’s framing rather than confirming it outright: Richter’s registered employer for 2026 is the South Dakota Corn Growers Association, for agriculture issues — not Tzadik. That’s not necessarily a contradiction.
South Dakota law only requires lobbyist registration for attempts to influence state legislation, not for engagement with city or county officials, so a Richter-Tzadik relationship at the municipal level would never have needed to appear in the state’s lobbyist directory in the first place. Still, as of this writing, the only public confirmation of that relationship is Tamang’s own statement on the dais — not an independent filing.
Tamang connected the lobbyist to the ledger: while Tzadik was, in his telling, resourced enough to retain “professional lobbying or government relations representation,” the company had let close to half a million dollars in delinquent utility obligations accumulate citywide — $344,000 of it at Star Village alone — while residents lived with what he called unsafe, deteriorating conditions. “So it was misrepresented by my perspective,” Tamang said, “and I think it’s the same kind of tactic we’ve seen before.”
What followed was the sharpest framing of the night. Tamang argued that accountability has to be matched to capacity — that a party can’t be held accountable for what it genuinely lacks the capacity to do, “unless there’s a serious public danger.” Tzadik, he said, has demonstrated no shortage of capacity: capacity to retain professional advocates, capacity to repeatedly reassure the city that violations would be corrected only for those assurances to go unfulfilled, capacity to manage its public image and tell its story on social media, capacity to protect its own interests. What it has repeatedly failed to do, he said, is use that same capacity to meet its most basic obligations to residents and to the community. “When capacity is this clear,” he said, “accountability should be equally high.”
He said he supported his legal department’s recommendations, but that in his view, Tzadik management did not need more leniency — that the company has had ample opportunity to act, that he was not persuaded by any last-minute appeals for additional time, cost reductions, or renewed trust, and that he would not support any leniency toward the company “to the best of my ability.”
Councilor Meyer followed, endorsing Tamang’s and Fisher’s points and reiterating the city’s crime statistics tied to Tzadik properties for the record.
Mayor Jason Salamun confirmed the timing once more before the vote. The council then voted yes on all three demolition contracts.
What Chapter 11 restructuring looks like- and why it’s worth knowing here
Tzadik’s South Dakota bankruptcy closed on June 26, 2026 — before any of this happened. So none of what unfolded at the July 20 meeting occurred while Tzadik was in active Chapter 11.
But the pattern on display — a distressed landlord retaining government-relations help to manage a municipality’s patience while its finances were in disarray — is common enough in real corporate restructurings that it’s worth explaining in general terms, purely as context for what this kind of behavior tends to look like when it does happen during a bankruptcy, not as a claim about Tzadik’s current legal status.
Companies in Chapter 11 routinely bring on lobbyists, public-relations consultants, or local “government relations” contacts for a specific reason: preserving the value of the underlying assets while a reorganization plan is negotiated often depends on keeping local governments from taking actions — liens, condemnations, forced receivership — that would make those assets harder to sell or refinance.
A friendly channel to city hall can buy time that a bankruptcy court’s automatic stay doesn’t always guarantee at the local level. None of that requires anything improper; it’s a standard part of distressed-asset management.
What makes Tzadik’s Rapid City version notable is the timing. If Richter’s relationship with Tzadik predates the June 26 closure, it would fit the classic pattern — a company managing municipal relationships while its restructuring was still underway.
If it postdates the closure, as the permit timeline suggests, it raises a different question entirely: why a company with its bankruptcy already behind it would need that kind of help managing a city it’s about to leave one way or another. That’s a detail worth running down — when, exactly, did Richter’s relationship with Tzadik begin?
What’s Still Open
The city has not said, on the record, whether it intends to seek reimbursement from Tzadik for the $133,500 it’s fronting to finish the job Tzadik didn’t.
Tzadik’s late, incomplete permit filing raises the obvious question of whether the company is building a paper trail for that fight before it starts. Nobody addressed that directly on July 20 — which means, for now, it’s the open thread this story leaves for whoever asks it next.
Sourcing
The July 20, 2026 Rapid City Council meeting; the City of Rapid City’s public meeting agendas and signed demolition contracts (Ridgeline Construction LLC, MMI LLC, HC LLC); the South Dakota Secretary of State’s lobbyist registration database.
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