Rapid City SD — In the same week the city closed the book on 28 demolished garages at Star Village, the rest of Adam Hendry’s South Dakota real estate empire was quietly coming apart in a Florida bankruptcy court — on three separate fronts, all at once, all tied together by the same lender, the same principal, and the same pattern: control slipping out of Hendry’s hands.

The Rushmore Hotel & Suites in downtown Rapid City is now the subject of a bad-faith dismissal fight.

Hendry’s own personal bankruptcy is entangled in a dispute over who gets to sell his assets. And a previously unreported 16,841-acre South Dakota ranch — valued at $86 million — has surfaced as another piece of collateral now caught in the same fight.

Here’s where things stand, and why it matters here.

Rushmore Hotel Bankruptcy Case Reassigned to New Judge

Tzadik Mount Rushmore Hotel, LLC filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on August 13, initially assigned to Judge Scott M. Grossman in the court’s Fort Lauderdale division.

The very next day, the debtor itself asked to move the case — and on August 19, the court granted it: the case was formally reassigned to Judge Mindy A. Mora, sitting in West Palm Beach, the same judge who has handled the rest of the Tzadik-affiliated bankruptcy filings.

The old case number was administratively closed the same day as a formality of the transfer, not a resolution on the merits.

Six days later, the hotel’s senior secured lender went on the offensive. BankWest, Inc. — a South Dakota bank headquartered in Pierre, owed more than $19.6 million by the hotel across five promissory notes — filed two emergency motions on August 19: one to dismiss the bankruptcy case entirely for bad faith, and one asking the court to lift the automatic stay so BankWest can pursue its collateral directly.

BankWest’s argument is pointed. The bank says it had a receivership hearing scheduled in Pennington County Circuit Court for August 14 — and that the hotel filed for bankruptcy in Florida on August 13, the eve of that hearing, specifically to trigger the automatic stay and block the receivership action.

BankWest also alleges Hendry diverted hotel rents and revenue to unrelated entities he controls, engaged in a pattern of overdrafts and collateral dissipation, and that the hotel can’t meet payroll without the bank voluntarily propping it up.

BankWest is asking the court to dismiss the case “with prejudice,” or in the alternative, bar the hotel from refiling for at least 180 days. That motion, along with the hotel’s own request to use cash collateral to keep operating, is set for a hearing August 26 in West Palm Beach.

In the meantime, the hotel is still operating. As of this week, its exterior sign remained lit and its own reservation system was actively taking bookings — one date range even returning a “due to high occupancy” notice.

Court filings show it employs 101 people — three salaried managers, 36 full-time hourly staff, 21 part-time hourly staff, and 41 seasonal hourly workers — and that payroll due August 21 already went out on August 18, before the debtor had court authorization to pay it. The hotel’s attorneys are now asking the court to bless that payment after the fact.

Adam Hendry’s Personal Bankruptcy Is Fraying, Too

The hotel isn’t an isolated bad-faith filing — it’s happening against the backdrop of Adam Hendry’s own personal Chapter 11 case, filed in April 2025 and confirmed this past May under a “Fourth Amended Plan of Reorganization.”

That plan put an independent Plan Administrator, Daniel Stermer, in charge of selling off Hendry’s LLC and trust-held properties to pay down more than $50 million in unsecured claims against Hendry personally.

The arrangement is already showing strain. When a prospective buyer made an offer on one of those properties in early June, Hendry began negotiating with the buyer directly — against the Plan Administrator’s direction — and told him in writing, “If they want to make deal, they need to contact me directly.” Stermer responded by asking the bankruptcy court to formally confirm that he, not Hendry, holds sole authority over the sale.

Hendry’s case has also moved — the docket now shows an “Intra-District Transfer,” with the case renumbered from 25-14711-PDR to 25-14711-CAP, under Judge Craig A. Pugatch.

It’s the same administrative pattern seen in the hotel case: cases shifting judges and numbers as this sprawling set of Tzadik/Hendry filings gets consolidated.

The New Thread: An $86 Million Ranch Near Rapid City

The property at the center of that early-June sale dispute is one Rapid City hasn’t heard about yet: Cheyenne River Ranch, LLC, a Hendry-controlled entity that owns more than 16,800 acres in Pennington County — real estate marketed as the Bismarck Ranch or Bismarck Trail Ranch. It’s listed for sale at $86 million, cash, through broker Robb Nelson of Fay Ranches, Inc.

Cheyenne River Ranch is also a co-debtor on a separate BankWest claim — more than $15 million, secured by the ranch itself.

Under Hendry’s confirmed reorganization plan, proceeds from any sale of the ranch have to satisfy BankWest’s claim in full before anything flows toward other creditors, and the sale price itself has to be sufficient to pay BankWest in full.

The plan also bars Cheyenne River Ranch from filing its own bankruptcy for five years — a provision aimed squarely at preventing exactly the kind of maneuver BankWest now says happened with the hotel.

What This Means for Rapid City Right Now

Taken together, the picture is of a South Dakota real estate portfolio — hotel, apartments, now ranchland — that’s being unwound not through an orderly local process, but through emergency motions in a Florida bankruptcy court, with a South Dakota bank as the common thread trying to hold the line on all of it.

For Rapid City specifically, the immediate stakes are the hotel: 101 jobs, a downtown property already flagged by its own lender as diverting revenue and unable to make payroll without outside help, and a bad-faith dismissal motion that — if granted — could send the case back to the very South Dakota receivership process the bankruptcy filing appears to have been designed to avoid. That fight gets decided August 26.

The ranch sale, separately, represents a large piece of Pennington County land now moving through a court-controlled sale process rather than a private one — worth watching both for who ends up buying 16,800+ acres outside Rapid City, and for how much of that $86 million actually reaches BankWest, Pennington County, or any other local creditor once Miami lawyers’ fees and competing claims are sorted out.

And BankWest’s own account — of diverted rents, overdrafts, and a debtor who “cannot meet payroll” without the bank’s help — is a specific, sworn allegation, not yet tested in court. The August 26 hearing in West Palm Beach is where that gets argued.

Sourcing

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This story is based on primary-source PACER filings from In re Tzadik Mount Rushmore Hotel, LLC, Case No. 26-20751-MAM (formerly 26-20751-SMG), U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of Florida, including the Emergency Motion to Dismiss Chapter 11 Case (Doc. 18), the Case Management Summary, and the court’s docket history; and from In re Adam Hendry, Case No. 25-14711-CAP (formerly 25-14711-PDR), including the Plan Administrator’s Motion to Enforce Plan (Doc. 530) and the confirmed Fourth Amended Plan of Reorganization. Current hotel operations independently confirmed via the property’s own reservation system and on-site observation.