Rapid City SD – Tzadik Management’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy closed quietly on June 26 — the same week the city, not the company, was still footing the bill to finish tearing down the condemned garages Tzadik had left behind in Star Village, and Rapid City remained short more than half a million dollars in unpaid utility bills.
Here’s what the record shows, and what’s still missing from it.
An Acquisition Strategy That Outran Its Own Upkeep
Tzadik Management, headquartered in Hollywood, Florida and led by Adam Hendry, built its portfolio through rapid acquisition rather than steady growth.
The company bought 18 Sioux Falls apartment complexes for more than $50 million starting in 2018, and picked up Rapid City’s 261-unit Star Village for $12.6 million in December 2019. By the time its South Dakota holdings collapsed into bankruptcy, Tzadik had overseen more than 20,000 housing units across 20 states.
The neglect that followed was documented independently in every market Tzadik touched.
In Dickinson, North Dakota, a local investigative series found more than 400 police calls in a single year to one Tzadik complex, and more than 90 code violations over two years — including raw sewage backing into a basement.
In Rapid City, police have said Tzadik’s properties rank at or near the top citywide for calls-for-service and reported crime.
Money troubles compounded the neglect. In 2024, Tzadik co-founder Alex Arguelles won a $10.6 million judgment against Hendry in Miami-Dade County, alleging he’d been cut out of property deals. Tzadik has separately alleged its former lender, Arbor Realty, got the company blacklisted by Fannie Mae — a claim Arbor denies.
The Bankruptcy: Bigger, and Shorter-Lived, Than It First Appeared
Tzadik’s South Dakota bankruptcy began small and grew. The first entity, Tzadik Sioux Falls Portfolio I, filed Chapter 11 on April 9, 2025. Rapid City Portfolio I followed on April 27. Over the following months, four more entities were folded into the same joint proceeding — including one, Tzadik Taylor’s Place, that didn’t file until July 7, 2025, three months after the case began.
By the time the dust settled, eight separate Tzadik entities were jointly administered under a single lead case in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Florida: Tzadik Sioux Falls Portfolio I, TMG 2 LLC, Garden Villas Apartments LLC, Tzadik Hidden Hills Apartments LLC, Tzadik Rapid City Portfolio I LLC, Tzadik Sioux Falls I LLC, Tzadik Sioux Falls Portfolio III LLC, and Tzadik Taylor’s Place LLC.
The court confirmed a reorganization plan on May 19, 2026. All eight cases — every single one — closed on the same day: June 26, 2026. The case’s claims register — up to its 24th version by mid-June — will show what unsecured creditors, including any Rapid City vendors or the city itself, actually recovered.
The case bounced between four different judges before it closed. It was assigned to Scott M. Grossman at filing, reassigned to Peter D. Russin the same week for reasons not stated in the docket, transferred to Craig A. Pugatch in June 2026 under a general court-wide reassignment order, and finally landed with Judge Mindy A. Mora after Pugatch recused himself the same day the case was closed out.
A Pattern of Image Management
Tzadik has a documented habit of countering bad press with self-published, news-styled content on its own website.
After the Tampa Bay Times reported in 2020 that Tzadik filed more pandemic-era eviction notices than any landlord in Florida — a finding later confirmed by the Center for Public Integrity, which found the evictions disproportionately targeted Black tenants in low-income neighborhoods, while Tzadik held a $3 million federal PPP loan — the company published a release on its own site insisting it had “reaffirmed its commitment” to residents.
In February 2026, five months before the city’s public reckoning over Star Village, Tzadik published another self-written piece on its own site claiming resident satisfaction had risen and repair times had fallen, citing a partnership with a Rapid City-based maintenance software company. The pattern repeats: get caught, publish a friendly-looking release with specific-sounding statistics, move on.
Where Sioux Falls and Rapid City Parted Ways
Sioux Falls saw its properties pulled out from under Tzadik while the bankruptcy was still active. Fannie Mae and Merchants Bank pushed for receivership, and at least one property — Woodlake Apartments — was stripped from Tzadik’s control and handed to a new operator, Equity Real Estate Management, within weeks of the city going public with its complaints.
Rapid City got no comparable rescue. No receivership has been reported for Star Village. Instead, the city is fronting the demolition costs itself: three signed contracts, all approved at the July 14, 2026 Public Works Committee meeting, authorize the city to tear down the 28 condemned Star Village garages that Tzadik was ordered — and failed — to remove by deadlines of November 13, 2025, and February 20, 2026.
- Ridgeline Construction LLC: Removed 6 garages for an actual fee of $29,733 (contract cap: $33,000).
- MMI LLC: Removed 8 garages for an actual fee of $45,849 (contract cap: $50,500).
- HC, LLC: Removed 14 garages for an actual fee of $49,800 (contract cap: $50,000).
In total, the city paid $125,382 to demolish 28 garages — slightly under the combined $133,500 cap authorized for the work.
The certifications on at least one of those contracts — Ridgeline’s — are dated July 8, 2026, six days before the city’s public meeting on the matter. The paperwork was ready before the pressure campaign began.
As of mid-July 2026, Tzadik owed Rapid City roughly $530,000 in delinquent utility bills, more than $344,000 of it tied to Star Village alone, plus about $26,000 in unreimbursed code enforcement abatements dating back to 2023.
City Attorney Carla Cushman has said the city is exploring criminal charges over fire code violations at some Tzadik properties. As of this writing, no charges have been filed, and whether that exploration advances further remains to be seen.
With the bankruptcy now closed, whatever ownership and management structure exists for Star Village today is whatever came out of the confirmed plan — permanently.
There is no public confirmation that Star Village received anything like Woodlake’s forced handoff to new management. The company’s legal exposure in this matter appears to be over. The city’s cleanup, and its unpaid bills, are not.
The confirmed Plan and Disclosure Statement itself — court docket #773 — holds the final answer to Star Village’s fate and whether its ownership officially changed hands.
The Rapid City Council meets Monday at 6:30 p.m. Readers who want to follow what happens next with Star Village — including any further action on the demolition contracts — can attend or watch the meeting directly on the city’s Facebook and YouTube channels.
Sourcing
Argus Leader, KELOLAND, The Real Deal, Dakota News Now, KOTA, the City of Rapid City’s public meeting agendas and signed contracts, federal bankruptcy court records for case 0:25-bk-13865 and its seven jointly administered member cases, the Tampa Bay Times, Popular Information, the Center for Public Integrity, and The Dickinson Press.
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