Rapid City SD – For the people who live at Star Village and Aspen Park, the bankruptcy deciding the future of their homes has mostly played out in a courtroom in West Palm Beach, Florida, about 1,800 miles away, in filings that run close to 100 pages apiece. The answers to the questions tenants actually have are in there. They’re just buried.

Both properties are scheduled for an online auction ending in the first days of December. Here is what the court record says about your lease, your deposit, and who your landlord is between now and then.

Is my home being sold?

Yes, most likely. Star Village (27 Signal Drive) and Aspen Park (426–434 East Fairmont Boulevard) are owned by Tzadik Rapid City Portfolio I, LLC, one of eight Tzadik companies in a jointly administered Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

The lender owed money on the properties, Merchants Bank of Indiana, has the right under the company’s confirmed bankruptcy plan to have them sold at public auction (Doc. 689, § 5.7).

The online auctions run Nov. 30 through Dec. 2, 2026, through the auction platform Ten-X.

A final court hearing to approve the sales is set for Dec. 4 (Doc. 865).

Merchants Bank can bid using the debt it’s owed instead of cash, so the winning buyer could be an outside investor or the bank itself (Doc. 833).

Does the sale cancel my lease?

No, if you have a written lease.

The bank’s own auction motion describes the properties as “occupied by residential tenants with written lease agreements granting occupancy” and states that those leases “will not be extinguished” by the sale (Doc. 812, ¶ 26).

The court-approved sale terms say the properties are sold free and clear of other liens and claims “other than tenant leasehold interests created by the Leases” (Doc. 833).

In plain terms, whoever buys the property takes it with your lease in place.

One caution: the bank’s motion also says it “makes no representations or warranties as to the validity and enforcement of the Leases” (Doc. 812, ¶ 26).

The sale won’t cancel your lease, but the bank isn’t vouching for any individual lease either.

What about my security deposit?

Your right to it was preserved in the bankruptcy, not wiped out.

The company’s confirmed bankruptcy plan treats every tenant lease as continuing and states: “All rights to security deposits and rights to prepaid rents shall be preserved for the benefit of tenants” (Doc. 689, Art. IX).

The court confirmed that plan on May 19, 2026, without changing that section (Doc. 773).

When the case was filed in 2025, Tzadik Rapid City Portfolio I listed $149,077.98 in security deposits owed to 210 tenants and $21,806.14 in prepaid rent owed to 32 tenants (Doc. 23, p. 22).

“Preserved” means tenants’ legal right to their deposits was protected. The filings do not show whether deposit money is being held separately.

What the filings don’t spell out is the mechanics after the sale closes: whether the new owner or the old company is the one who actually returns your deposit when you move out. That question hasn’t been answered in the record yet.

My lease ran out and I pay month to month. Am I covered?

That’s the least clear part of the record.

The bankruptcy plan kept all unexpired leases in force, without limiting that to written ones (Doc. 689, Art. IX).

But the auction protection specifically covers tenants “with written lease agreements” (Doc. 812, ¶ 26).

If your written lease expired and you’ve stayed on month to month, the filings don’t say clearly which side of that line you fall on.

After a sale, month-to-month tenancies are generally governed by South Dakota landlord-tenant law.

Who is my landlord right now?

Until the sale closes, it’s still Tzadik Rapid City Portfolio I, LLC.

The court’s confirmation order states that Tzadik Properties and its manager, Adam Hendry, “will continue to manage the Debtors” (Doc. 773). Hendry holds a 69.24% ownership stake in the Rapid City company (Doc. 823, Ex. A).

That means rent, repair requests, and complaints still go through Tzadik’s management until a buyer takes over.

Your deposit rights under South Dakota law

Whoever owns the building, South Dakota law sets basic rules for residential security deposits:

• The cap. A landlord can’t require a deposit of more than one month’s rent, unless both sides agree to more because of special conditions (SDCL 43-32-6.1).
• 21 days to return it. Within 21 days after your tenancy ends and you give your landlord a mailing address, the landlord must return your deposit or give you a written statement of the specific reasons for keeping any of it (SDCL 43-32-24).
• Limited deductions. A landlord can keep only what’s reasonably needed to cover unpaid rent or other money owed under the lease, and to repair damage beyond ordinary wear and tear (SDCL 43-32-24).
• An itemized list on request. If you ask, the landlord must give you an itemized accounting of anything withheld within 45 days after the tenancy ends (SDCL 43-32-24).
• Penalties. A landlord who doesn’t follow these rules loses the right to keep any part of the deposit. Keeping a deposit in bad faith can bring punitive damages of up to $200 (SDCL 43-32-24).

South Dakota’s lease law does not require landlords to keep security deposits in a separate or escrow account.

What should I do now?

• Keep your paperwork. Your lease (including any expired one), any renewal, and your security deposit receipt.
• Keep proof of rent. Receipts, bank records, or money order stubs showing what you’ve paid and when.
• Put repair requests in writing and keep a copy, with the date.
• Take dated photos of your unit’s condition, especially before any change in ownership.
• Get help if you need it. Dakota Plains Legal Services provides free civil legal help to eligible South Dakotans, or you can consult a local landlord-tenant attorney.

This article explains what court records say. It is not legal advice for any individual situation.

Key dates

• Nov. 2, 2026: Deadline for a “stalking horse” bid, an early offer that sets the opening price (Doc. 865)
• Nov. 30–Dec. 2, 2026: Online auctions on Ten-X (Doc. 865)
• Dec. 4, 2026, 10 a.m.: Final sale hearing, held by Zoom only (Doc. 865)

Sourcing

U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Florida, Lead Case No. 25-13865-MAM and member case No. 25-14655-MAM (Tzadik Rapid City Portfolio I, LLC): Schedules (Doc. 23); Third Amended Joint Chapter 11 Plan of Reorganization (Doc. 689); Order Confirming Plan (Doc. 773); Auction Motion (Doc. 812); Membership Interest Purchase Agreement exhibits (Doc. 823); Auction Order and Auction Notice (Doc. 833); Order Rescheduling Auctions (Doc. 865). South Dakota Codified Laws, Chapter 43-32 (Lease of Real Property), including §§ 43-32-6.1 and 43-32-24.

The post Star Village and Aspen Park Are Going to Auction. Here’s What It Means For Tenants appeared first on THE RAPID CITY SENTINEL.

Rapid City SD – For most of September, the story on Star Village looked like this: a settlement with a judgment creditor had pulled the Rapid City trailer park out of a straightforward bank liquidation and retitled it into a new ownership entity, as part of a broader $66.5 million refinancing deal.

A new filing from Merchants Bank of Indiana (MBI), entered Oct. 2, 2026, tells a different story — one where that deal fell apart three weeks ago, and Star Village appears to have been sitting back inside MBI’s original auction scope the entire time.

What MBI’s new filing actually says

Doc. 864, filed in the Lead Case (25-13865-MAM) as relief requested without a hearing, asks the court to push back the timeline on an auction order MBI already has in hand.

Buried in the explanation for why: “On September 24, 2026, MBI was informed that the Nectar Transaction would not close.” MBI defines “the Nectar Transaction” as the deal underlying Dkt. 822 — the same recapitalization package that was supposed to pay off Merchants Bank, refinance the broader Tzadik portfolio, and carry Star Village’s ownership change along with it.

The actual deadline was Sept. 25, 2026 at 2:00 p.m. Eastern — the latest in a string of extensions MBI had already granted.

When it passed, MBI’s existing Auction Order activated its own fallback: authority to begin marketing the properties for a straightforward Ten-X liquidation auction. Doc. 864 reschedules that auction from Oct. 26-28 to Nov. 30-Dec. 2, 2026, pushes the Stalking Horse Bid Deadline to Nov. 2, and delays the Final Sale Hearing to a December date not yet set.

The order that was never amended

Here’s the part that matters for Star Village specifically.

The original Auction Order governing this sale — Doc. 833, entered Sept. 2, 2026 — defines “the Rapid City Property” as a single combined parcel: Aspen Park and Star Village together, sold AS-IS and free and clear of all liens for MBI’s benefit.

That order predates the Sept. 8 Arguelles/Gatoralex settlement that was supposed to carve Star Village out into its own entity, Star Village Owner LLC.

A review of the Lead Case docket from Doc. 833 forward — every entry through Doc. 864 — shows nothing that formally amends that property definition.

The settlement itself was approved, but in a separate case (Hendry’s personal bankruptcy, Doc. 622, entered Sept. 21). Nothing connects that approval back to MBI’s still-standing order in the Lead Case.

That gap matters because of what else is on the record: Tzadik Rapid City Portfolio I LLC’s own sworn bankruptcy schedules describe Merchants Bank’s lien as covering “all real property under the secured mortgage” — a blanket mortgage, not one tied to a specific parcel.

A later settlement moving Star Village’s title into a new LLC doesn’t make a pre-existing mortgage disappear on its own; ordinarily, a new owner takes property subject to whatever liens were already attached to it, unless the lienholder specifically releases them. MBI releasing anything doesn’t appear anywhere in this record.

A second thread pointing the same direction

A separate, unrelated dispute offers corroborating evidence.

Broker Brad Stearns has an outstanding commission fight tied directly to how the Dkt. 822 transaction gets classified — a “refinancing” or a “sale” — and it was continued three separate times (Aug. 31, Sept. 8, Sept. 15), stacked on the same hearing dates as the transaction’s own closing deadline.

As of Sept. 4, Stearns was still formally objecting to the debtor’s request for more time to close. No order resolving that dispute appears anywhere in the docket since — in a case that generates a certificate of service for routine mailings.

A commission fight explicitly tied to a closing, going silent with no resolution, is consistent with there having been no closing to resolve it over.

A judgment creditor who may have gotten nothing — and lost nothing

Alejandro Arguelles and Gatoralex Consulting agreed, as part of the Sept. 8 settlement, to accept $3 million — $2 million at Closing, $1 million deferred — in exchange for releasing their lien against three Sioux Falls properties, despite holding a claim against that same collateral in excess of $11.5 million.

If Closing never happened, nothing in the record shows that payment was ever made. But nothing in the record shows the lien was released either.

Read together, that suggests Gatoralex may not have lost anything when the deal collapsed — they may simply still be holding the full-size claim they had before they agreed to take a steep discount on it.

An insider deal that folded Star Village in voluntarily

It’s worth remembering that Star Village was never actually part of Merchants Bank’s collateral in the refinancing — Hendry chose to include it.

He’s in a position to make that choice because he personally holds a 69% ownership stake in Tzadik Rapid City Portfolio I, LLC, the entity that owns Star Village, a figure confirmed in Gatoralex’s own filings and sourced to Portfolio I’s bankruptcy schedules.

That ownership stake doesn’t establish anything improper on its own — but it does mean the attempt to move Star Village out of a straightforward bank auction and into a privately negotiated restructuring was something Hendry initiated, using his own controlling position, rather than something imposed on him by a lender.

Now that the broader deal has fallen apart, Star Village appears to have landed back exactly where it would have been without that attempt at all.

What this means for the people who live there

What’s documented here is narrow but real: Star Village is scheduled to be sold at a secured-creditor auction in late November, under terms that transfer it AS-IS and free of existing liens to whoever wins.

What isn’t documented is what happens after. An AS-IS liquidation sale changes who holds the deed; it does not, on its own, say anything about a buyer’s plans.

Nothing in any filing reviewed for this piece establishes what a new owner would do with the property, and this piece isn’t going to guess. What residents are facing, as of today, is a documented and fast-approaching change of ownership with no legal continuity built in beyond whatever state landlord-tenant protections already apply — and genuine, publicly unanswered uncertainty about everything that comes after that.

Sourcing

This piece is drawn from primary-source filings in the jointly administered Chapter 11 case of Tzadik Sioux Falls Portfolio I, LLC et al., Case No. 25-13865-MAM, and the related personal Chapter 11 case of Adam M. Hendry, Case No. 25-14711-MAM, both U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of Florida: Doc. 833 (Auction Order, entered 9/2/26); Doc. 834 (Amended Objection to Refinancing Transaction, filed 9/3/26); Doc. 814/835/837 (Stearns commission dispute and related hearing notices); Doc. 610/622 (Arguelles Settlement Agreement and order of approval, personal case); and Doc. 864 (Motion to Modify Auction Order, filed 10/2/26). Tzadik Rapid City Portfolio I, LLC’s Schedule D is drawn from its own bankruptcy filings in Case No. 25-14655-MAM.

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Rapid City SD – Tucked into a routine, $125,642.10 citywide utility write-off headed to the Rapid City Council on Oct. 5 is $33,840.53 in unpaid bills tied to Tzadik, the Florida-based landlord.

The debt is spread across 93 individual line items in Appendix A to Resolution No. 2026-077, ranging from a 17-cent credit to a $1,462.96 balance, tied to addresses on Crescent Drive, Kellogg Place, and Signal Drive — all Star Village — plus two accounts at 426 and 434 E. Fairmont Blvd, Aspen Park (Reso. 2026-077, Appendix A, pp. 18-20).

Resolution 2026-077 is item 2 of 11 on the Public Works Committee’s Sept. 29 consent calendar, filed as PW092926-02.

Consent items pass in a single bundled vote — alongside routine business like sewer-line televising bids and well-improvement contracts — unless a committee member specifically pulls one out for individual discussion.

Two Months Ahead of Schedule

The timing itself breaks a pattern. The city’s uncollectable-utility-account write-offs have landed in mid-to-late November every year on record: Nov. 15, 2022 (Resolution 2022-085); Nov. 14, 2023 (2023-090); Nov. 26, 2024 (2024-100); Nov. 21, 2025 (2025-143).

This year’s version arrived Sept. 29 — nearly two months earlier — with no explanation beyond the standard boilerplate language citing South Dakota’s six-year statute of limitations on collecting unpaid utility debt.

Sloppy Paperwork or a New Entity?

The write-off list also contains an inconsistency in how it identifies the debtor.

The two Aspen Park accounts are billed correctly, to “Tzadik Rapid City Portfolio I LLC.” Every one of the 91 Star Village line items — all sharing a single account number, 18857 — is billed instead to “Tradik RC Portfolio LLC.”

No entity by that name appears in the South Dakota Secretary of State’s business registry, searched both by “starts with” and “contains.”

Write Offs And Collections Attempts?

The write-off moves in the opposite direction from another recent city action involving the same landlord.

On Sept. 16, City Attorney Carla Cushman asked the Legal & Finance Committee for authority to retain outside counsel to sue five separate Tzadik-affiliated LLCs over a combined $643,206.21 in unpaid utility bills, as of Aug. 28, 2026 (LF091626-06).

None of the entities, account numbers, or addresses in that collection action match the ones being written off in Appendix A — two separate, non-overlapping pots of unpaid Tzadik utility debt moving through City Hall in opposite directions within the same month, one being pursued through litigation, the other being formally forgiven as uncollectable.

Star Village exited Tzadik Rapid City Portfolio I earlier this month via a court-approved settlement with judgment creditor Alejandro Arguelles, retitled to a new entity, Star Village Owner LLC.

Aspen Park remains in Portfolio I and is on track for a Nov. 3 public auction through Ten-X.

Sourcing:

Resolution No. 2026-077 and Appendix A, City of Rapid City Public Works Committee agenda, Sept. 29, 2026, item PW092926-02 (origination meeting 09/29/2026; council hearing 10/05/2026; staff contact Connie Namanny). LF091626-06, City of Rapid City Legal & Finance Committee agenda, Sept. 16, 2026. South Dakota Secretary of State, Business Information Search (queried for “Tradik,” starts-with and contains, no records found). Prior-year write-off resolutions: 2022-085, 2023-090, 2024-100, 2025-143, City of Rapid City Public Works Committee agendas.

The post Rapid City Is Writing Off $33,840 in Past Due Tzadik Utility Debt Deemed Uncollectable appeared first on THE RAPID CITY SENTINEL.

A motion to table failed. A council member couldn’t get a straight answer on how a debt ballooned into six figures. And by the end, one alderman had already told the room how this ends.

Rapid City SD – Rapid City Council’s Monday night vote to authorize outside counsel against several Tzadik-linked LLCs was never really in doubt — it passed, moved by Council President Stephen Tamang and seconded by John B. Roberts.

What took time was everything in between: a failed motion to table, pointed questions about return on investment, a City Attorney who called the whole thing more complicated than it needed to be, and a closing prediction from Councilman Bill Evans that landed like a dropped mic.

A motion that went nowhere

The item — authorizing outside counsel to pursue roughly $643,000 in unpaid utility bills across five Tzadik-affiliated properties — opened with a motion to table. It failed, 2–8. The item stayed on the table, and stayed contentious.

Laura Armstrong: “Where are our fiscal conservatives?”

Alderwoman Armstrong said she’d hoped to postpone the vote — not, she was careful to say, to give Tzadik “any kind of grace.” She called what the company is doing at Star Village “completely wrong.” Her objection was aimed closer to home.

“I really feel there’s been a lot of finger-pointing at Tzadik, and I think we should look at the city and ask ourselves how this happened,” Armstrong said. “I can’t seem to find the actual cost of how much this grew to, but it’s exorbitant, and I don’t understand why this was not addressed a year or two ago — before it got into the six digits.”

That question has an answer sitting in the bankruptcy record.

Before Tzadik filed for Chapter 11 in April 2025, the company’s own bankruptcy schedules listed a combined $29,623.99 owed to the City of Rapid City on the Star Village/Aspen Park property alone — split between a $21,450.99 utility-management line and an $8,173.00 general account.

City records now put the balance on that same property at $390,070.59, part of $643,206.21 owed across all five entities named in Monday’s vote. Armstrong’s “six digits” concern isn’t hypothetical; by the City’s own accounting, the debt cleared that mark well over a year after the amount on file with the bankruptcy court.

Armstrong pressed further: what would outside counsel actually cost, what would the return on investment look like, and who on the council was tracking it. “I think we are going to get pennies on the dollar, if anything,” she said. “I think we need to dissect what is going on and make sure this never happens again.”

John B. Roberts: One Bad Option

Councilman John B. Roberts didn’t disagree with Armstrong so much as argue the question was beside the point. “We can sit and beat our heads against a wall all day long to figure out how to make this never happen again, and it will still happen again,” he said.

The city’s only real otion against a delinquent utility customer, he said, is shutting off water — and that isn’t a real option against an occupied residential property. “Do you want to turn off the water to 300 residents? That’s impossible to do.”

Roberts added that the city had no way to see this coming and no way to stop it once Tzadik started buying property in Rapid City.

“We never knew, when they bought all these properties, that they were gonna be this kind of a landlord,” he said. “If we had a crystal ball, we’d have a utopia, but we don’t.”

Greg Strommen’s three questions

Councilman Greg Strommen pressed City Attorney Carla Cushman directly: Was the outside-counsel arrangement contingent or hourly, and was there a cap?

What were realistic expectations for actually collecting?

Given the bankruptcy’s automatic stay, could the city collect anything at all?

Carla Cushman says collection action is “relatively straightforward”

Cushman answered Strommen directly: “It’s not a contingent agreement, it’s an hourly-rate agreement — though I don’t have the agreement in front of me so I don’t recall [the exact terms], but I did put a limit on it of $50K, and any additional money past that would need to come back for approval.

This is relatively straightforward, and I feel confident it would be successful in retrieving some money on behalf of the city and our enterprise funds.”

On the bankruptcy question, Cushman said: “Your last question has to do with the bankruptcy, which Alderwoman Armstrong also referenced. I think the bankruptcy can make this seem messier than it really is. There’s a small amount of money that was assessed to those properties before the bankruptcy was filed, in April 2025. On your next agenda — I don’t remember the exact phrase — but basically, forgiveness of those amounts. We filed something with the bankruptcy court, but we’re at the bottom of the list.”

On why the $643,206.21 currently being pursued isn’t covered by the bankruptcy at all, Cushman said: “Once they filed bankruptcy, they stopped paying the bills for the most part, and those debts are not subject to the bankruptcy.”

Court records complicate her description of the smaller, older debt slightly.

The pre-petition amount Cushman referenced — a combined $29,623.99 tied to Star Village/Aspen Park — doesn’t appear in the bankruptcy case as a claim the City filed.

It shows up instead as a scheduled debt: an amount Tzadik itself listed as owed to the city in its own bankruptcy paperwork, carrying a designation (“s94,” “s95”) consistent with a debtor-scheduled liability rather than a creditor-filed proof of claim.

Whether that’s a meaningful distinction or simply how Cushman described a debt she didn’t have precise figures for in the room isn’t clear from Monday’s meeting alone — but the record and her characterization of it don’t fully line up.

Bill Evans with the Mic Drop moment

Councilman Bill Evans closed the discussion by saying the quiet part out loud and touching on a rampant rumor regarding Star Village.

“The big guy is just stalling, and he’s gonna get out of here smelling like a rose. Yet a little person always pays the ultimate price.”

He continued: “We’ve been watching this evolve over the last several years, and it’s very obvious where this is gonna end up. It will go to bankruptcy court, somebody’s gonna wind up buying that property, and the people that live in Star Village — who are mainly people [without] a lot of money — are gonna end up displaced. And we’re gonna have a hill filled with luxury homes and apartments up there. And that’s where this is going to end up. You heard it here first, folks. The prognosticator speaks again.”

The motion to authorize outside counsel passed, moved by Tamang and seconded by Roberts. Evans and Armstrong opposed the motion.

Sourcing

Council remarks are transcribed directly from video of the September 21, 2026 Rapid City Council meeting.

Financial figures are drawn from City Attorney Carla Cushman’s August 28, 2026 memorandum to the Legal and Finance Committee (item LF091626-06) and from the Tzadik Rapid City Portfolio I, LLC bankruptcy claims register (Case No. 25-14655, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of Florida), obtained via the case’s claims and noticing agent.

The post “We’re Going To Have a Hill Filled With Luxury Homes and Apartments”, Alderman Evans States As Council Splits on Chasing Tzadik Utility Debt appeared first on THE RAPID CITY SENTINEL.

Six days after the hearing, the order that actually moves the property still hasn’t been entered. Aspen Park, meanwhile, stays on track for a November auction.

Rapid City SD – A federal bankruptcy judge has authorized Adam Hendry to sign and carry out the settlement that would determine Star Village’s fate — but as of this writing, the separate order actually required to move the property itself has not been entered, leaving one of the longest-running open questions in the Tzadik/Hendry bankruptcy only half resolved.

One signature, not two

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Mindy A. Mora signed an order on September 21 in Hendry’s personal bankruptcy case approving an agreement he reached with judgment creditors Alejandro Arguelles and Gatoralex Consulting LLC, dated September 8. That order authorizes Hendry, personally, to execute and perform the agreement.

But the agreement itself is explicit that it needs approval in two separate places: Hendry’s personal case, and the corporate bankruptcy case covering Tzadik Sioux Falls Portfolio III and the other Reorganized Debtors — the entities that would actually have to convey Star Village into a newly formed ownership entity, Star Village Owner LLC.

Only the first of those two approvals has happened. As of the most recent docket check, no order has been entered in the corporate case authorizing the transaction itself.

That matters because the mechanics that make this deal real — Star Village Owner LLC taking title to the roughly 178-lot manufactured home community at 27 Signal Drive, a $1,000,000 promissory note and first-priority mortgage on the property itself going into escrow, a $2 million payment to Arguelles — are all things the agreement describes happening “at Closing.”

Nothing reviewed so far confirms Closing has occurred, or can occur, without that second approval.

Once complete, the payments would resolve Arguelles’ roughly $10.6 million judgment against Hendry — entered in Miami-Dade Circuit Court in October 2024 — only as it applies to three Sioux Falls properties tied to a separate Tzadik entity: Brookshire, Turning Leaf and Woodstone.

The underlying judgment against Hendry personally, and a court-ordered charging order reaching many of his other business interests, would remain fully intact either way.

Aspen Park takes a different road

Star Village’s sister property under the same original debtor entity, the roughly 81-unit Aspen Park apartment complex, is not part of this settlement at all. Aspen Park remains on track for the public Ten-X auction already approved by the court, with a final sale hearing scheduled for November 3.

The two properties were bundled under the same Tzadik entity when the bankruptcy began. They are now headed toward two entirely different endings — one resolved through a private settlement now locked in by court order, the other headed for the auction block in front of any bidder willing to show up.

Fannie Mae: “not the first time”

Separately, and in a different case within the same sprawling bankruptcy, Federal National Mortgage Association — Fannie Mae — filed its own motion on September 21 asking the court to force compliance with a different confirmed plan, this one covering Tzadik Sioux Falls Portfolio I and Tzadik Sioux Falls I. Fannie Mae holds secured claims across 22 properties tied to those two debtors.

According to the motion, the debtors have failed to sign an amendment to Fannie Mae’s loan documents, failed to provide financial information Fannie Mae requested, and failed to schedule a property condition assessment the plan itself required — more than four months after the plan was confirmed in May.

Fannie Mae’s filing doesn’t stop at describing its own experience. It points directly to Hendry’s other bankruptcy case, noting that both BankWest and Hendry’s own court-appointed plan administrator have separately had to ask a judge to force him to comply with a confirmed plan before.

“This is not the first time Mr. Hendry has been dilatory in ensuring compliance with confirmed plans and accompanying confirmation orders,” the motion states.

A hearing on Fannie Mae’s motion is set for October 27 at 1:30 p.m.

Sourcing

This report is based on primary court filings from the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Florida: Case No. 25-14711-MAM (In re Adam Hendry), Doc. 610 (Debtor’s Expedited Motion to Approve Refinancing Related Agreement, filed 9/10/26) and Doc. 622 (Order Granting same, entered 9/21/26); and Case No. 25-13865-MAM (In re Tzadik Sioux Falls Portfolio I, LLC, et al.), Doc. 833 (Order Approving Bidding Procedures, entered 9/2/26), Doc. 845 (Fannie Mae’s Motion to Enforce Confirmed Plan, filed 9/21/26), and Doc. 846 (Notice of Hearing). As of a docket check on Case No. 25-13865-MAM at 10:47 p.m. Eastern on September 21, 2026 (per PACER transaction receipt; the most recent entry being Doc. 847, a certificate of service), no order had been entered approving the corporate-side transaction. All documents are public record, obtained via PACER.

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Rapid City SD – Adam M. Hendry is, on paper, one of the most closely supervised people in South Dakota real estate right now.

A federal Plan Administrator holds sole authority to sell his ranch, his hotel, and dozens of the LLCs that carry his name.

A confirmed bankruptcy plan bars one of his own companies from filing its own Chapter 11 for five years. A judgment creditor has a standing charging order on his membership interests in nearly everything he owns.

None of that has stopped him from signing agreements in three different capacities in the same week, personally guaranteeing debt on companies that are supposed to be under someone else’s control, or — in the case that gives this piece its name — watching one of his own companies retain its own lawyers to fight the man appointed to oversee his personal estate.

Signing for Himself, and for Everyone Else

Hendry’s personal Chapter 11 case (No. 25-14711, now assigned to Judge Mindy A. Mora) confirmed a plan in May 2026 that named Daniel J. Stermer as independent Plan Administrator, with sole authority to market, list, negotiate, and sell the LLC and trust properties tied to Hendry — including Cheyenne River Ranch, the roughly 16,800-acre spread listed for $86 million.

Hendry agreed to this. He signed a July 3, 2025 order specifically addressing “assets owned by entities owned or controlled by Adam Hendry” and establishing notice protocols before any of those assets could be sold (Doc. 103).

He has also, repeatedly, acted like the arrangement doesn’t apply to him.

Stermer’s own Doc. 530 (filed June 9, 2026) describes Hendry negotiating directly with a prospective Cheyenne Ranch buyer against the Plan Administrator’s explicit direction, telling the buyer by email that “if they want to make deal, they need to contact me directly.” Stermer asked the court to confirm, in writing, that he alone controls the sale.

Two months later, Stermer’s Doc. 38 went further: it accused Hendry of using the Rushmore Hotel’s own, separate Chapter 11 filing — a case Hendry put the hotel into on August 13, 2026, the eve of a scheduled state-court receivership hearing — as a way to shield that property from Stermer’s oversight entirely.

The September 8, 2026 settlement agreement that resolved a separate creditor objection shows the pattern most plainly.

Hendry signed it not once, but as himself, and separately as Managing Member of three different Tzadik entities — Tzadik Sioux Falls Portfolio III, Tzadik Properties LLC (Doc. 610, p. 24), and Tzadik Management Group LLC (Doc. 610, p. 25). The signature blocks for the other parties — the creditors, the purchaser, the new entity created to hold Star Village — were left blank in the filed copy.

As of this writing, full execution by every party hasn’t been confirmed.

The Guarantees Stack Up

A Plan Administrator can only control what’s already been disclosed. What keeps surfacing is how much of Hendry’s personal financial exposure was never confined to any single company.

In April 2022, Hendry personally guaranteed a $3.5 million preferred-equity investment that FC Sioux Falls Pref, LP made in TMG 2, LLC — one of the corporate entities under the same lead bankruptcy case as Star Village.

Under that Investment Agreement, Hendry personally holds 50% plus an additional 11.666% Class B interest in TMG 2; Tzadik Management Group holds another 37.132% (worth $22.9 million on the books); FC Sioux Falls holds 100% of the preferred class.

TMG 2’s underlying collateral is Tzadik Sioux Falls Portfolio I — the same 25-property portfolio at the center of the ongoing recapitalization fight with creditor Alejandro Arguelles.

Separately, in April 2025, Hendry personally signed Forbearance and Payment Agreements acknowledging Cheyenne River Ranch’s debt to that same lender, FC Sioux Falls. As of August 26, 2026, the ranch — sold for $23 million, with most of the proceeds already earmarked for other creditors — still owed FC Sioux Falls $5,138,518.19.

FC Sioux Falls alleges it was never given notice of Hendry’s personal bankruptcy case at all, despite Hendry personally signing the underlying agreements, and that the Plan Administrator says he didn’t know about the debt when he proposed distributing the ranch’s remaining proceeds to five other creditors instead.

And then there’s Arguelles. Alejandro Arguelles and Gatoralex Consulting hold a $10,645,377.97 judgment against Hendry, entered in Miami-Dade Circuit Court on October 8, 2024, plus a Charging Order reaching many of his LLC membership interests.

The September 2026 settlement extends that reach further: any new equity interests Hendry receives through the recapitalization deal must have their distributions paid straight to the Arguelles Creditors until the judgment is satisfied.

Hendry personally owes an additional $195,000 in legal fees under that settlement — payable, per its own terms, only after every other creditor in his personal bankruptcy case has been paid in full, and before he sees a dollar from any of his other entities.

Beyond the Four Cases

Public reporting on the Tzadik bankruptcies has mostly tracked four proceedings: the Sioux Falls/Rapid City portfolio cases, the Rushmore Hotel, and Hendry’s personal filing.

Hendry’s own confirmed plan lists more than 70 “LLC and/or Trust” entities tied to him in some form — a Georgia Portfolio and Georgia Portfolio II, a cluster of “Tzadik Eagle” LLCs (Bay, Briar, Oaks, Park, Millenium, Reserve), Tzadik Leasing LLC, L’Chaim 18 Inc. — none of them assigned to any of the four sale tranches, none of them currently before a bankruptcy judge (Doc. 444, pp. 13–14).

A direct pull of South Dakota Secretary of State records turns up 24 Tzadik -affiliated entities registered in the state.

Five of them have never appeared in any tranche list, any joint-administration order, or any bankruptcy filing this paper has reviewed:

Tzadik Sioux Falls Portfolio II, LLC

Tzadik Sioux Falls Portfolio IV, LLC

Tzadik South Dakota Portfolio, LLC

A dissolved entity called Tzadik Taylor’s Place 1, LLC (distinct from the real, active “Tzadik Taylor’s Place, LLC” already in bankruptcy)

Three “Managing Member” corporate shells built to control the LaCrosse, Woodlake, and Hidden Hills apartment entities.

One of those shells is itself a small case study in the gap between paperwork and oversight.

Tzadik Hidden Hills

Tzadik Hidden Hills Managing Member, Inc. — the corporation that exists specifically to control Tzadik Hidden Hills Apartments LLC, a property currently sitting inside the active federal bankruptcy case — received a delinquency notice from the state in April 2025 for failing to file its own annual report, and was administratively dissolved on June 16, 2025.

The underlying apartment complex remains under federal court supervision. The company that’s supposed to be managing it does not, at the state level, currently exist.

Tzadik South Dakota Portfolio LLC

The most striking find sits in the paperwork for Tzadik South Dakota Portfolio, LLC — a Delaware entity that filed for a South Dakota Certificate of Authority in June 2024 and has never appeared in any bankruptcy proceeding.

Its original filing listed its South Dakota principal office not at a Hollywood, Florida mail-drop like nearly every other Tzadik entity, but at 506 6th Street in downtown Rapid City — the office of Gunderson, Palmer, Nelson & Ashmore, LLP.

The filing was signed by Quentin Riggins, a partner at that firm. Riggins is also the personal trustee of Shalom on the Range Trust, the sole equity member of Cheyenne River Ranch, LLC, and it was Riggins who signed the Forbearance and Payment Agreements on the trust’s and the ranch’s behalf in the FC Sioux Falls dispute described above.

Whether that overlap reflects nothing more than a law firm handling routine corporate paperwork for a client, or something closer to an attorney with a standing role inside more than one corner of Hendry’s structure, is not something the public record answers. It’s a fair question, and an open one.

The Pattern That Predates the Paperwork

None of the bankruptcy filings, guarantees, or entity structures above required a single tenant complaint to happen.

The complaints exist anyway, and they run well before — and independent of — anything a judge has ruled on.

City Council Resolution 2026-066 recorded a $400 assessment against Tzadik Rapid City Portfolio I LLC for a property at 156 Crescent Dr., after the city said it notified the ownership in mid-April about raw sewage and sewer debris in the front yard. According to the resolution, the city ultimately had to send its own contractors to haul human waste and used toilet paper off the lawn and to the landfill.

At the July 20, 2026 City Council meeting, Councilor Callie Meyer read into the record staff-provided data showing Star Village recorded 105 violent crimes in 2025 — the highest total of any property in the city — with the pattern continuing into the first half of 2026.

Police Chief Don Hedrick, addressing the council roughly twenty minutes later, said the department faces “tremendous amounts of problems on these properties” that it doesn’t see elsewhere, forcing officers to be stationed there around the clock — pulling resources away from traffic enforcement, downtown initiatives, and “other city hotspots.” Committing that level of resource to one property owner’s holdings, Hedrick told the council, “is not fair to our community and it’s not fair to our city.”

A Star Village tenant told KOTA Territory News in April 2025 that the unit was infested with rodents and bed bugs at move-in, and that a broken heater went unrepaired for more than a month while maintenance said there was no money to fix it.

Separately, a Sioux Falls tenant named Nikki Loyd filed a $2.35 million claim in the Tzadik Sioux Falls bankruptcy case tied to a Fair Housing Act complaint (HUD File No. 08-23-6817-8) alleging the company refused disability accommodations; HUD terminated conciliation efforts in April 2024 without resolution. The dollar figure in her claim is her own unaccepted settlement demand, not an award or a court finding — it was filed to preserve her rights in the bankruptcy while the underlying HUD case continued.

Sioux Falls outlet KELOLAND has documented roach infestations, mold, and rising crime at Tzadik-managed properties there since at least 2022, prompting Mayor Paul TenHaken to call the company’s operating model “morally and ethically wrong” and a tenants’ union to form specifically to help Tzadik renters.

A Dickinson Press investigation found the same complaints — overcrowding, unsafe conditions, unresponsive management — at Tzadik properties in North Dakota.

The properties change. The complaints don’t.

The Man Who Ate His Own Tail

The clearest illustration of the contradiction at the center of this company doesn’t come from a tenant, a creditor, or a city official. It comes from Hendry’s own companies.

Tzadik Mount Rushmore Hotel LLC — the entity Hendry personally controls, and which he used to file the Rushmore Hotel into its own separate bankruptcy case — has, through its own counsel, formally objected to Stermer’s Motion to Enforce the Confirmed Plan (Doc. 55, p. 1).

It’s joined in that objection by two other Hendry-controlled entities, Tzadik Blue Hawk LLC and Tzadik Energy Portfolio LLC.

Together, captioned as “the Tzadik Debtors,” they are actively fighting, in federal court, the Plan Administrator appointed to oversee Hendry’s own personal estate.

BankWest, the hotel’s largest secured creditor at roughly $19.6 million, filed its own motion asking the court to enforce the confirmed plan and let Stermer auction the hotel — a motion filed in both the hotel’s case and Hendry’s personal case, and set on the same September 15 hearing (Docs. 56, 57, p. 1; Doc. 614).

BankWest’s separate motion to dismiss the hotel’s bankruptcy alleges Hendry diverted the hotel’s rents to unrelated entities he controls, and that the hotel can’t meet payroll without the bank voluntarily covering the gap — allegations BankWest has made, not findings any court has yet reached.

At the July 20 council meeting, with the crime data already read into the record and Council President Stephen Tamang publicly noting that the company had retained a paid lobbyist — Mitch Richter — while missing its own demolition deadlines, Mayor Jason Salamun directly offered Richter the floor to respond on the company’s behalf. Richter declined to speak.

Tamang’s assessment from that meeting still holds up against everything documented since: that Tzadik has repeatedly shown the capacity to retain professional advocates, reassure officials, and manage its public image, while failing to apply that same capacity to its basic obligations — to the city, to its own creditors, and, increasingly, to the estate its own founder is legally supposed to be surrendering control of.

What remains unresolved is not whether any of this happened. It’s why a company still fighting its own oversight, still guaranteeing debt across entities a court has already restricted, and still generating the same tenant complaints in three states, keeps being allowed to operate as though none of it does.

Sourcing

This piece draws on signed and sworn primary-source documents from the U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of Florida (Cases 25-13865, 25-14655, 25-14711, 26-20751, and related dockets)

South Dakota Secretary of State business filings

Rapid City Council Resolution 2026-066

The July 20, 2026 Rapid City City Council meeting recording

KOTA Territory News (April 9, 2025)

Out-of-state context is drawn from KELOLAND News and the Dickinson Press.

Allegations made in filed motions and objections are attributed to the party making them and have not been independently adjudicated.

The post Hendry v Hendry: The Man Who Sues His Own Empire appeared first on THE RAPID CITY SENTINEL.

Mitch Richter — the same lobbyist Council President Stephen Tamang named on the record at the July 20 council meeting — stood before the Legal and Finance Committee Wednesday and asked it to hold off on suing Tzadik-linked LLCs over unpaid utility bills. The committee said no, and sent the item to full Council unanimously.

Rapid City SD ,- Item LF091626-06 asked the committee to authorize City Attorney Carla Cushman to hire outside counsel and file collection actions against five Tzadik-affiliated LLCs over a combined $643,206.21 in unpaid water, sewer, and garbage bills.

It was on the Sept. 16, 2026 Legal and Finance Committee’s consent calendar.

Richter’s Pitch

“Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My name is Mitch Richter, and I’m here representing Tzadik management,” Richter told the committee when he took the podium on Item #4. His argument, in three parts:

• Payment history: Richter said Tzadik doesn’t dispute owing water and sewer charges and hasn’t stopped paying — that the company has paid the city since November 2025, and over the past several months has paid over $217,000 on these accounts, averaging roughly $27,000 a month.
• The disputed charge: He focused on the August bill specifically — actual water/sewer usage came to about $26,900, but a line labeled “adjustment” added roughly $24,800 more, nearly doubling the total. He said Tzadik has formally asked the city in writing for a breakdown of how the adjustment is calculated, with supporting documentation, and has not received one. He argued it’s unreasonable to be pushed toward litigation over a charge that’s never been explained.
• Duplicative litigation: On the roughly $390,000 attributed to Tzadik Rapid City Portfolio I LLC (Star Village and Aspen Park), Richter argued that entity is already in bankruptcy, the city is already pursuing payment through that bankruptcy process (as Cushman’s own Sept. 11 memo acknowledged), and that authorizing a separate lawsuit on top of that would be duplicative and would spend city money chasing a balance already before the bankruptcy court.

His ask: direct staff to sit down with Tzadik, reconcile the disputed charges, and hold the outside-counsel authorization for roughly another month to let that process play out.

A Case He Failed to Make For Most of the Debt

Richter’s “duplicative litigation” argument was specifically about Portfolio I — Star Village and Aspen Park, roughly $390,070.59 of the total.

He never extended that reasoning to the other four entities, which together account for about $253,135.62: Lacrosse Apartments ($141,950.67), Mountain View Estates ($83,814.05), Oxford Apartments ($24,649.07), and Dakota Flats ($2,721.83).

That’s not an oversight so much as a structural limit — Portfolio I sits inside the Lead Case’s joint administration (25-13865), where Cushman’s own memo says she’s already pursuing payment through the bankruptcy.

The other four aren’t debtors in any case; they’re LLC-owned properties being sold off individually under Hendry’s personal reorganization plan.

The same “we’re already before the bankruptcy court” logic doesn’t automatically apply to them, and Richter didn’t offer a separate justification for asking the city to hold off on that roughly $253,000 as well.

Who Is Actually Paying Richter?

Richter’s South Dakota lobbyist registration — filed with the Secretary of State’s office and received 4/18/2026 — lists his employer simply as “Tzadik Management.” Not Tzadik Rapid City Portfolio I LLC, not any of the other named debtor entities — just the generic management-company name, the same one he used when he told the council he handles “special projects” for the company.

It’s a small detail, but it tracks with the broader pattern here: the entity paying Richter doesn’t appear to be any of the specific LLCs actually named in this specific collection action, which is consistent with a structure where the management company sits outside the individual property-owning entities entirely.

Worth being precise about what that registration does and doesn’t mean: it’s filed under SDCL 2-12, which governs lobbying the state Legislature during a legislative session — a different thing, legally, from appearing before a city council or committee.

Tamang’s July 20 point that Richter is a registered lobbyist working for Tzadik is accurate; the registration doesn’t mean Richter was obligated to disclose that status to the council specifically, since South Dakota’s lobbyist-disclosure law isn’t written to reach city-level appearances the same way.

A Question Worth Asking

If Tzadik Management retains and pays a lobbyist out of its own operating revenue, separate from the individual LLCs, a fair question follows: why does that same structure leave an entity like Dakota Flats LLC unable to cover a $2,721.83 utility bill — the smallest of the five debts by a wide margin?

The two facts don’t automatically connect. A management company keeping its own fee revenue separate from what an individual property owes is ordinary in real estate, not evidence of anything improper on its own.

But it’s not a question asked in a vacuum, either.

In the Rushmore Hotel bankruptcy case, secured creditor BankWest has alleged in a filed motion that Hendry diverted hotel rents and revenue to unrelated Hendry-controlled entities, on top of what it describes as a pattern of overdrafts and collateral dissipation.

That’s not speculation — it’s a creditor’s sworn allegation already in the court record, describing money moving between entities in this same corporate family in ways that left one property short to benefit something else.

Whether anything similar explains Dakota Flats’ unpaid balance is unconfirmed. But given that precedent already exists in this specific portfolio, it’s a fair question to put on the record rather than let go unasked.

A Demolition Claim

Richter also raised the Star Village garage demolitions as evidence of good faith, saying Tzadik removed 40 structures ahead of the city’s deadline, at a cost north of $150,000.

That figure is worth noting against what’s already on the record: as of the July 20, 2026 council meeting, the total was 28 garages, with Tzadik having submitted 18 demolition permits and 10 still outstanding at that time.

Whether the scope grew since then or Richter’s figure includes structures beyond the original 28 is unclear — but the gap between his number and the one the city cited two months ago is real, and worth naming as its own detail rather than smoothing over.

The Same Lobbyist, A Different Posture

Richter was present at the July 20 council meeting too, but said almost nothing — declining to comment on unrelated agenda items and passing on a final chance the mayor offered him to respond even after Tamang, Councilwoman Meyer, and Police Chief Don Hedrick criticized Tzadik’s handling of the property directly. The council voted unanimously to move forward with the city’s demolition contracts anyway.

Wednesday was the first time Richter has actually stood up and made Tzadik’s case out loud.

Pulled Off Consent

Item 4 didn’t move quietly to a vote. Councilman John B. Roberts pulled it off the consent calendar for separate discussion.

The Committee’s Response

Roberts opened by asking Finance Director Daniel Ainslie a direct question: “Other than the outstanding balance for Star Village, what is the outstanding balance right now? Just a rough estimate.”

The answer: $253,000 — a figure that lines up almost exactly with the roughly $253,135.62 owed across the four non-Portfolio I entities (Lacrosse, Mountain View, Oxford, and Dakota Flats) once Star Village and Aspen Park are set aside.

Roberts, in other words, asked the committee’s own staff to confirm the same gap in Richter’s argument independently.

Finance Director Daniel Ainslie — the point of contact Cushman’s memo had named since she couldn’t attend — told the committee he had tried to make contact with Tzadik several times and failed. Roberts’s response was pointed: “I know you have. The only time they ever act in good faith is when they’re afraid of getting sued.”

Earlier in his remarks, Roberts said: “I find it very interesting that this company — the only time they ever want to come do anything is after we threaten to take them to court. So hopefully maybe you can get together with them and get something taken care of.” He closed with: “Anyway, thank you for showing up. Thanks”.

Tamang added only a brief endorsement: “I just wanted to say I completely agree with Mr. Roberts.”

The Committee Vote

Roberts moved to advance the item; Lance Lehmann seconded. The vote was unanimous, sending LF091626-06 to full Council, expected to take it up at its Sept. 21, 2026 meeting — rejecting Richter’s request to delay.

Why This Matters

Two months ago, Tamang told Tzadik that its own capacity was the problem: a company able to retain professional advocates and manage its public image had, by that same measure, no excuse for failing its basic obligations to residents and the city.

Wednesday was that argument playing out again, in miniature. Richter arrived with a detailed, three-part financial case — payment history, a specific disputed charge, a legal argument about duplicative litigation — the kind of preparation a $2,721.83 bill doesn’t usually get.

What he didn’t bring was payment, or, by Ainslie’s account, so much as a returned phone call.

Roberts said it plainly: the only time this company acts in good faith is when it’s afraid of getting sued.

A unanimous committee vote suggests that’s simply how the city now plans to get paid.

Sourcing

Reported from direct transcription of the Sept. 16, 2026 Rapid City Legal and Finance Committee meeting, published to YouTube.

Richter’s lobbyist registration is drawn from his SD Secretary of State filing (received 4/18/2026).

Prior council and bankruptcy-case details are drawn from previously published Sentinel reporting and primary-source court filings, linked and cited above.

The post The Rapid City Legal and Finance Committee Reject Tzadik’s Offer to Delay $643,000 Collection Suit appeared first on THE RAPID CITY SENTINEL.

Rapid City SD – The Sentinel has covered Adam Hendry’s Tzadik real estate empire hearing by hearing, filing by filing, since late July — sixteen pieces and counting. This is the first time we’re stepping back to lay out the whole picture in one place: four separate bankruptcy cases, dozens of LLCs, and courtrooms in South Dakota and Florida alike.

What is Going On

Adam M. Hendry is a Florida-based landlord who, through his company Tzadik Management Group and dozens of affiliated LLCs, owns or owned residential and commercial properties across South Dakota — including Star Village and Aspen Park in Rapid City, LaCrosse Apartments, several other Rapid City apartment complexes, the Rushmore Hotel, and a 16,841-acre ranch in Pennington County.

Hendry personally filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in April 2025. Since then, that case and three related ones have spun off a sprawling legal fight involving secured lenders, a judgment creditor, and a court-appointed administrator now selling off pieces of the portfolio — all overseen by the same federal judge in West Palm Beach, Florida.

Four Bankruptcies, One Landlord

There isn’t one Tzadik bankruptcy case — there are four, all before Judge Mindy A. Mora, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of Florida:

• Adam Hendry’s personal Chapter 11 — Case No. 25-14711 (the case number has shifted twice with judge reassignments: -PDR, then -CAP/-EPK, now -MAM).
• Filed April 2025. Hendry’s confirmed “Fourth Amended Plan of Reorganization” (Doc. 444, confirmed May 21, 2026) puts a court-appointed Plan Administrator, Daniel Stermer, in charge of selling off dozens of LLC-held properties in a staggered schedule — the “tranche” system described below.
• The Lead Case / corporate joint administration — Case No. 25-13865-MAM, jointly administering eight entities: Tzadik Sioux Falls Portfolio I (the lead case itself), TMG2 LLC, Garden Villas Apartments, Tzadik Hidden Hills Apartments, Tzadik Rapid City Portfolio I (Star Village and Aspen Park), Tzadik Sioux Falls I, Tzadik Sioux Falls Portfolio III, and Tzadik Taylor’s Place (Doc. 812, filed 8/14/26).
• This plan was confirmed earlier, around May 19, 2026, and these entities are now “Reorganized Debtors” — technically out of bankruptcy, but still selling real property under court-approved procedures.
• Tzadik Mount Rushmore Hotel, LLC — Case No. 26-20751-MAM. Filed separately on August 13, 2026, days ahead of a scheduled receivership hearing in Pennington County.
• Secured creditor BankWest, Inc. has argued in a motion to dismiss that this filing was an attempt to dodge Stermer’s authority under the confirmed personal-bankruptcy plan.
• Tzadik Blue Hawk, LLC and Tzadik Energy Portfolio, LLC — Case Nos. 26-20353-MAM and 26-20356-MAM. Filed around the same time as the hotel case. Both entities are jointly objecting, alongside the hotel, to Stermer’s Motion to Enforce the Confirmed Plan (Doc. 55).

Properties that Effect Rapid City Directly

• Star Village (~178 lots, 27 Signal Drive) — owned by Tzadik Rapid City Portfolio I LLC, part of the Lead Case.
• Headed to a Ten-X online auction Oct. 26–28, 2026 (Doc. 812), though a Sept. 8, 2026 settlement agreement (Doc. 610) between Hendry and judgment creditor Arguelles/Gatoralex separately retitles the property into a new entity, “Star Village Owner LLC,” as part of a broader refinancing deal.
• Star Village Owner LLC was formed in Delaware on July 16, 2026 and registered to do business in South Dakota on Sept. 10, 2026 (SD SOS Business ID FL338848)
• Its listed beneficial owner, SD MS Manager SPE LLC, is a separate Delaware entity formed July 22, 2026 sharing the same registered agent (CCS Global Solutions, Inc.) — a confirmed structural link between the two, though what “MS” refers to remains unconfirmed.
• Aspen Park (~81 units) — also owned by Tzadik Rapid City Portfolio I LLC, also headed to the October auction. Its treatment under the Sept. 8 settlement agreement is not addressed in that document.
• LaCrosse Apartments (761 E. Anamosa St., 265 units) — Tzadik Lacrosse Apartments LLC, a Fourth Tranche property with an accelerated private-sale contract deadline of Feb. 1, 2028 (Doc. 840).
• Mountain View Estates — a Second Tranche property, and separately the entity at the center of Gatoralex’s original objection to the Lead Case refinancing deal.
• Oxford Apartments and Dakota Flats (dba Town House Motel, 210 St. Joseph St.) — First Tranche properties now moving toward auction after private-sale deadlines expired without buyers (Docs. 602, 604).
• The Rushmore Hotel (445 Mt. Rushmore Rd., 177 rooms) — subject of its own separate, contested bankruptcy case.
• Cheyenne River Ranch (16,841+ acres, also known as the Bismarck Ranch) — a First Tranche property that already sold, closing July 29, 2026 for $23 million.

What A Sales Tranche Is

Under Hendry’s confirmed personal-bankruptcy plan, dozens of LLC-held properties not already in their own separate bankruptcy cases are being sold off in four numbered “tranches,” each with its own private-sale contract deadline before falling back to a public auction (Doc. 444).

First Tranche properties’ deadline already expired Sept. 3, 2026 with no buyers under contract, triggering the auction process now underway.

Second Tranche properties (including Mountain View Estates) have a Dec. 3, 2026 deadline.

Third and Fourth Tranche properties (including LaCrosse Apartments) follow later, with some Fourth Tranche deadlines separately accelerated by the Sept. 8 Arguelles settlement described below.

Who’s Fighting over What

• BankWest, Inc. — secured lender owed roughly $19.6 million by the Rushmore Hotel entity and over $15 million by Cheyenne River Ranch; pushing to dismiss the hotel’s separate bankruptcy case and force its sale under Stermer’s authority instead.
• Merchants Bank of Indiana — holds the blanket secured mortgage on Star Village and Aspen Park (a $11,473,991 claim on that entity specifically) and a much larger secured position across the broader Lead Case portfolio; pushed for the Ten-X auction as a backstop while a competing refinancing deal was negotiated.
• Morgan Stanley — proposed lender on a $66.5 million refinancing package intended to pay off Merchants Bank and restructure ownership of several Lead Case properties, including Star Village, through new “NewCo” entities.
• Alejandro Arguelles / Gatoralex Consulting LLC — Hendry’s Tzadik co-founder, who left the company in 2020 under a settlement he says was never paid; an arbitration panel awarded him $8.9 million in February 2024, converted into a $10,645,377.97 Miami-Dade County final judgment that October, secured by a lien on several Sioux Falls properties.
• Objected to the Morgan Stanley refinancing as an insider deal, then reached a Sept. 8, 2026 settlement (Doc. 610) trading a $3 million payment for release of that specific lien, plus accelerated sale deadlines on LaCrosse Apartments, Raza Ranch, and L’Chaim Farm.
• Nectar, Inc. — holds a secured claim and equity interest in the Rushmore Hotel case, and separately financed Dakota Flats/Town House Motel according to a March 2025 press release.
• FC Sioux Falls Pref, LP — a $3.5 million preferred-equity investor in TMG2 LLC (personally guaranteed by Hendry) that says it was left off a Plan Administrator distribution motion despite Hendry having personally signed agreements acknowledging the debt.

What Just Happened

A major hearing block was held Sept. 15, 2026 before Judge Mora, consolidating several of these threads — including the Lead Case recap motion, the Arguelles settlement approval, and BankWest’s motion to enforce the plan and auction the Rushmore Hotel. Full details will follow once the outcome is confirmed against an entered order.

Coverage so far

Seventeen pieces, in order, if you want the story as it actually unfolded rather than the summary above:

• Tzadik’s Bankruptcy Is Closed. Rapid City’s Bill is Still Open — July 28, 2026
• Accountability is a Funny Thing: Tzadik Brought a Lobbyist to a Deadline It Already Missed — July 28, 2026
• The Tzadik Mount Rushmore Hotel Files for Bankruptcy — And the Paperwork Wasn’t Even Signed — Aug. 14, 2026
• Three Courtrooms, One Empire: Inside the Bankruptcy Fight Now Deciding the Fate of the Rushmore Hotel and an $86 Million Dollar Ranch in Pennington County — Aug. 21, 2026
• Star Village Faces October Auction — If a Last Minute Deal Doesn’t Beat the Clock First — Aug. 24, 2026
• Judge Approves Auction Backstop for Rapid City Apartment Complexes as Refinancing Pursued in Lieu of Sale — Aug. 26, 2026
• The Rushmore Hotel’s Bankruptcy Gets Its First Real Test in Court — Aug. 26, 2026
• Star Village and Aspen Park Diverge as Landlord’s Refinancing Bid Heads to an August 31st Hearing — Aug. 28, 2026
• How Nectar, Inc. was Embedded in the Tzadik Collapse Before a Rapid City Bankruptcy was Even Filed — Aug. 28, 2026
• Adam Hendry’s Personal Bankruptcy Administrator Claims Tzadik Rushmore Hotel Filing Was Used to Dodge Him — Aug. 29, 2026
• Creditor Alejandro Arguelles and Gatoralex Consulting LLC Calls Tzadik Refinancing Deal an Insider Move — Aug. 31, 2026
• What the Tzadik Mount Rushmore Hotel’s New Bankruptcy Schedules Do — and Don’t — Reveal — Sept. 4, 2026
• Adam Hendry’s Own Bankruptcy Filing Says He Owns Both Sides of a $28,000 Payment — Sept. 5, 2026
• State Records Tie Adam Hendry’s Dakota Flats LLC to a Second Rapid City Motel — Sept. 6, 2026
• Creditor States that Adam Hendry Hid a $5.1 Million Debt as His Estate Pivots to Public Auction Sept. 9, 2026
• Settlement Filed in Tzadik Bankruptcy Sets Accelerated Sale Deadline for Hendry’s Farm, Ranch and LaCrosse Estates Apartments — Sept. 11, 2026
• Rapid City Moves to Collect $643,000 from Tzadik-Linked LLCs Already Headed to Auction — Sept. 14, 2026

Sourcing: Case numbers, dates, and figures throughout are drawn from primary-source federal bankruptcy court filings, cited above by document number and filing date.

The post A Readers Guide To the Adam Hendry/Tzadik Bankruptcy Cases to Date appeared first on THE RAPID CITY SENTINEL.

Rapid City SD – The City of Rapid City is preparing to go to court over more than $643,000 in unpaid utility bills owed by five LLCs tied to embattled landlord Adam Hendry’s Tzadik real estate portfolio — money that, in several cases, is attached to properties already moving through court-ordered liquidation.

The request is Item LF091626-06 on the consent calendar for the Sept. 16, 2026 Legal and Finance Committee meeting, 12:30 p.m. at Rapid City Hall.

In a Sept. 11 memo to the committee, City Attorney Carla Cushman asks Council to authorize hiring outside counsel to file collection actions against five Tzadik-affiliated entities over unpaid water, sewer, and garbage bills (LF091626-06 memo, Sept. 11, 2026).

The Balances on Record

As of Aug. 28, 2026, the outstanding balances Cushman cited were:

• Tzadik Rapid City Portfolio I LLC — $390,070.59. This is the entity that owns Star Village and Aspen Park, currently headed to a Ten-X online auction Oct. 26–28, 2026, with a final sale hearing on or about Oct. 29 (Doc. 812, filed 8/14/26).
• Tzadik Lacrosse Apartments LLC — $141,950.67. Owner of LaCrosse Estates Apartments (761 E. Anamosa St.), a Fourth Tranche property under Hendry’s confirmed reorganization plan (Doc. 444, filed 3/13/26).
• Its sale timeline has since been accelerated by a separate agreement between Hendry and judgment creditor Alejandro Arguelles/Gatoralex Consulting LLC: a sale contract for the property must be secured by Feb. 1, 2028, with closing to follow within 30 days — and only if that deadline is missed does the property fall back to the standard auction procedures under the Hendry Plan (Doc. 840, filed 9/11/26).
• Mountain View Estates LLC — $83,814.05. A Second Tranche property under the same plan, and separately the entity behind the disputed “Mountain View Property” at the center of judgment creditor Gatoralex Consulting’s objection to a proposed $66.5 million Morgan Stanley refinancing in the Sioux Falls bankruptcy case (Doc. 831, filed 8/30/26).
• Oxford Apartments LLC — $24,649.07. A First Tranche property now headed to auction after its private-sale deadline expired Sept. 3 with no buyer under contract (Doc. 602, filed 9/4/26; Doc. 604, filed 9/8/26).
• Dakota Flats LLC — $2,721.83. Also a First Tranche property, doing business as the Town House Motel, likewise moving toward auction under the same process.
• Tzadik Mount Rushmore Hotel LLC — no amount currently outstanding. Cushman is including the hotel on the agenda item preemptively, “to avoid having to seek separate Council approval” if its bills fall behind — while the hotel operates current on its utilities, it’s fighting its own separately filed, contested bankruptcy case (26-20751-MAM), which secured creditor BankWest has argued in a motion to dismiss was itself an attempt to dodge the tranche-sale process governing the other four entities.

That’s $643,206.21 combined across the four entities with active balances, plus Portfolio I.

Doc. 840 — filed the same week as this collection request, alongside a still-pending motion to approve the broader $66.5 million Morgan Stanley recapitalization (Dkt. 822) — accelerates sale deadlines for two other Hendry-controlled Fourth Tranche properties under the same Arguelles/Gatoralex settlement, though neither owes the city money under this agenda item: Raza Ranch LLC (a contract for the land surrounding the Raza Ranch parcel due June 1, 2027, and a separate contract for the parcel holding the Raza Ranch building due Dec. 1, 2027) and L’Chaim Farm LLC (contract due Sept. 1, 2027).

All three accelerated deadlines run only “until the Arguelles Creditors’ Judgment is satisfied” — one more sign of how directly Arguelles’ objection is now dictating the pace of Hendry’s asset sales.

Water, Sewer, and Who Actually Pays

Cushman’s memo notes that, with the exception of the hotel, these accounts serve duplexes or multi-family residential buildings and are billed to the property owner — not the tenants living there.

By ordinance, the city can shut off water and other utility service when an owner doesn’t pay, and normally turns delinquent accounts over to Credit Collections Bureau. But Cushman writes that disconnection “is a difficult decision when the residential property owner is the account holder, because turning off the water will significantly burden the tenants, not the person responsible for paying the utility bills” — language that echoes concerns raised publicly about conditions at Star Village.

City staff are separately evaluating whether to pursue disconnection for some or all of the five properties, in addition to any collection lawsuit.

The Bankruptcy Wrinkle

Portfolio I is treated differently in the memo than the other four entities.

It’s already mid-bankruptcy, jointly administered under the Sioux Falls-based lead case that’s sending Star Village and Aspen Park to auction next month.

Cushman doesn’t spell out why that changes her approach, but she writes separately that she has “made attempts within the context of the bankruptcy of Tzadik Rapid City Portfolio I LLC to obtain payment for this entity’s outstanding utility bills,” and will continue those efforts — language suggesting the city is pursuing this specific debt as a creditor inside the bankruptcy case itself, alongside whatever collection authority Council grants this week.

Whatever the city eventually collects from Portfolio I would come from an entity whose real estate is already spoken for.

Merchants Bank of Indiana holds a blanket secured mortgage across all of Portfolio I’s roughly 96 Star Village parcels and two Aspen Park parcels, with a secured claim of $11,473,991 — and the properties are set to sell “AS-IS/WHERE-IS” and free of junior liens at the October auction (Doc. 812).

Unsecured debt like an unpaid utility bill typically sits well behind a secured mortgage holder in that kind of liquidation.

A Debt that’s Grown, not Shrunk

The $390,070.59 now attributed to Portfolio I is worth comparing to what Council President Stephen Tamang said publicly two months ago.

At the July 20, 2026 Council meeting, Tamang stated Tzadik had accumulated “close to half a million dollars” in delinquent utility obligations portfolio-wide, including $344,000 specifically at Star Village.

The two figures aren’t a clean apples-to-apples comparison — Tamang’s number was for Star Village alone, while Portfolio I’s current balance also covers the much smaller Aspen Park complex under the same ownership entity.

But the trajectory is hard to miss: two months after a City Council meeting where officials publicly weighed the tradeoffs of cutting off water to Tzadik’s tenants, the specific balance tied to Star Village has grown, not shrunk — even as the property itself heads toward a new owner at auction.

What Happens Next

Cushman writes that she solicited proposals for outside legal services over the summer and selected Thomas Braun Bernard & Burke to represent the city in these collection actions.

She won’t be at Wednesday’s meeting; questions are directed to Finance Director Daniel Ainslie instead.

LF091626-06 is item 4 of 8 on the meeting’s consent calendar, meaning it will pass without discussion unless a committee member pulls it for a separate vote.

Sourcing

Financial figures, quotes, and details of the city’s collection strategy are drawn from a Sept. 11, 2026 memorandum from City Attorney Carla Cushman to the Legal and Finance Committee, part of the public agenda packet for Item LF091626-06 on the committee’s Sept. 16, 2026 agenda. Bankruptcy case details are drawn from primary-source court filings, cited above by document number and filing date. Council President Stephen Tamang’s remarks are from the Rapid City Council’s July 20, 2026 meeting.

The post Rapid City Moves to Collect $643,000 from Tzadik – Linked LLC’s Already Headed to Auction appeared first on THE RAPID CITY SENTINEL.

Rapid City SD – A settlement agreement filed Sept. 11 in the Tzadik Sioux Falls Portfolio III bankruptcy case sets hard deadlines for the sale of three properties tied to Rapid City developer Adam Hendry — a South Dakota ranch, a Florida farm, and LaCrosse Estates Apartments, the 265-unit complex at 761 E. Anamosa St. that has operated quietly under Tzadik ownership since 2021.

The agreement (Doc. 840) resolves an objection creditor Alejandro Arguelles and his company, Gatoralex Consulting, LLC, filed last month against a proposed refinancing transaction (Doc. 831).

It was filed “held in escrow subject to final exhibit documentation,” with signature pages for Hendry, Arguelles, Gatoralex, and the Tzadik entities still blank as of filing.

The Terms of the Agreement

Under the agreement, SD Purchaser LLC — a newly formed Delaware entity acquiring the reorganized debtors’ membership units — will pay Arguelles and Gatoralex $2 million at closing and an additional $1 million within 30 days (Doc. 840, §§2.1-2.2).

In exchange, the Arguelles creditors will release their lien against real property owned by Tzadik Sioux Falls Portfolio III, LLC, partially satisfying a $10,645,377.97 state court judgment against Hendry entered in October 2024.

The $1 million deferred payment is secured by a promissory note and a first-priority mortgage against Star Village, the Rapid City mobile home park at 27 Signal Drive, held by a new entity called Star Village Owner LLC (Doc. 840, §3.1).

The note and mortgage are held in escrow and destroyed if the deferred payment is made on time; if not, they become enforceable and can be recorded against Star Village (Doc. 840, §3.6).

For 45 days after closing, Star Village cannot be mortgaged, sold, or otherwise encumbered without Arguelles’s written consent (Doc. 840, §5.1).

Both Star Village Owner LLC and SD Purchaser LLC are signed into the agreement by Derrick Barker Jr., identified as Managing Member of both entities.

Three Properties, Three Deadlines

Separately from the Star Village mortgage, the agreement accelerates sale deadlines already set out in Hendry’s personal Chapter 11 plan (the “Hendry Plan,” Dkt. 444 in Case No. 25-14711, confirmed at Dkt. 519) for three properties (Doc. 840, §7.3):

• Raza Ranch, LLC — a sale contract for the land surrounding the Raza Ranch parcel is due by June 1, 2027; a separate contract for the parcel where the Raza Ranch building sits is due by Dec. 1, 2027. Each closing must follow within 30 days of its contract deadline.
• L’Chaim Farm, LLC — a sale contract is due by Sept. 1, 2027, closing within 30 days. L’Chaim Farm operates a 6.5-acre kosher urban farm in Dania Beach, Florida, offering horseback riding, a petting zoo, and community events; Hendry has publicly described it as the only all-kosher farm in Florida.
• Tzadik LaCrosse Apartments, LLC — a sale contract for LaCrosse Estates is due by Feb. 1, 2028, closing within 30 days.

If any of these deadlines are missed, the agreement reverts to the auction procedures already built into the Hendry Plan (Doc. 840, §7.3).

Hendry is separately barred from authorizing any mortgage or lien against any of the three properties until Arguelles is paid in full, and from allowing any of them to file for bankruptcy protection for two years after the agreement takes effect (Doc. 840, §7.5).

Notably, Hendry himself has no authority to decide how or to whom these properties are sold.

That power belongs solely to Daniel Stermer, the court-appointed Plan Administrator for Hendry’s personal bankruptcy case, who retains sole authority to market, list, negotiate, and close the sales (Doc. 840, §7.4)

The LLC Trail

South Dakota Secretary of State filings confirm a pattern across several Hendry-linked entities.

Cheyenne River Ranch, LLC, Tzadik Rapid City Portfolio I, LLC, and L’Chaim Meats, LLC each reported owning agricultural land as recently as 2023, then reported not owning agricultural land beginning with reports filed in 2024 — the same window in which Cheyenne River Ranch Meats, LLC (organized 2022) was dissolved, effective Dec. 18, 2024, and Tzadik Cattle, LLC went delinquent with the Secretary of State’s office.

A commercial listing separately marketed by Beach City Realty — “The ‘Lchaim Farms’ – Woodland Lane Assemblage” — advertises roughly 10 contiguous acres in Dania Beach for redevelopment, citing a nearby agricultural-to-mixed-use rezoning as precedent.

Property records for a neighboring parcel at the same address list Hendry, James Halperin, Christina [surname unconfirmed], and Christine Alletto — the same CPA who signed recent South Dakota registered-agent filings for Cheyenne River Ranch, LLC and Tzadik South Dakota Portfolio II, LLC — along with a trust identified as ALEF, as owners of record.

What’s Still Ahead

The agreement required the Tzadik bankruptcy court’s approval by Sept. 10, and requires approval from the court overseeing Hendry’s personal bankruptcy case no later than Sept. 15 (Doc. 840, §8.1).

Separately, a hearing on broker Brad Stearns’s objection over commission terms and the underlying refinancing motion — previously continued from Sept. 8 — is also set for Sept. 15 (Doc. 837).

If the transaction does not close within 20 days of the agreement’s effective date, it terminates automatically and Arguelles’s original lien and objection rights are restored in full (Doc. 840, §12.1).

Sourcing

This piece is based on court filings in Case No. 25-13865-MAM (U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of Florida), including Doc. 831, Doc. 837, and Doc. 840; South Dakota Secretary of State business entity filings; and a commercial real estate listing independently located and reviewed by the Sentinel.

Derrick Barker Jr.’s relationship, if any, to Nectar, Inc. — which raised objections to related Star Village terms during the Sept. 8 hearing — has not been independently confirmed as of publication.

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