The founder of dog owner-focused apartment communities in Grapevine and North Garland alleges the largest apartment management company in the country, Greystar, was negligent in overseeing operations at one of the communities, costing him tens of millions of dollars.
Steve Bardack, founder of Dane Park Communities, filed a lawsuit in Dallas County District Court Wednesday morning against Greystar Management Services, Greystar Real Estate Partners, GREP Texas, GREP General Partner and two individual defendants. According to the lawsuit, Bardack conceptualized the idea for Dane Park during the pandemic, when many people were adopting pets, and once he realized the need in the market for apartments developed specifically to accommodate pet owners and also make a positive impact on the pet population.
Dane Park has no breed or size restrictions for dogs, and instead, every dog that lives in the complex undergoes and passes a temperament test. Residents are afforded unlimited access to an onsite “doggie day care,” and the complex itself partners with local rescues and shelters to facilitate a foster care program. Dog-focused amenities include doggie doors in every apartment and “AI-driven technology packages that allow owners to monitor the status of their ‘fur babies’ throughout the day,” according to the suit.
The 119-page lawsuit brings claims for breach of contract, professional negligence, fraud, fraudulent inducement, fraud by nondisclosure, fraud by concealment, negligent misrepresentation, breach of fiduciary duty, defamation, business disparagement, and seeks indemnification. Greystar is accused of closing out thousands of work orders for residents’ maintenance requests without performing repairs. Those maintenance requests included issues with broken toilets and one instance where a broken air conditioner was not repaired, which one resident — a military veteran — alleged led to the May 2024 death of her seven-year-old English Bulldog, Cassidy, who was an emotional support animal that helped treat the resident’s PTSD.
“Greystar falsely told residents that repairs were not being made because Bardack was an absentee landlord, and that the property was not being maintained because Bardack told Greystar that he would not provide the needed funds for repairs,” the suit alleges. “Nothing could have been further from the truth, and when Greystar’s employees made these statements, Greystar knew they were both intentional and knowingly false.”
Greystar did not respond to an email seeking comment Wednesday.
“Steve Bardack created the Dane Park Communities to address the previously unmet needs of dog-loving apartment residents and promote his mission of reducing the staggering number of dogs now being euthanized,” Bardack’s attorney, Kenneth N. Hickox Jr. of Gardner Haas, said in a statement. “Greystar promised to help him implement that vision, but the lawsuit alleges that, instead, Greystar’s gross mismanagement of Dane Park Grapevine put it at risk. The lawsuit details how Greystar then sought to cover-up its malfeasance by lying to residents and defaming plaintiffs. It also lays out the negative impact Greystar’s wrongdoing had on Plaintiffs’ finances, as well as the wellbeing of tenants and their beloved pets. With this action, Dane Park is committed to holding Greystar accountable, and to rebuilding residents’ trust in Dane Park’s commitment to creating a ‘dog loving utopia’ in North Texas and throughout the United States.”
Bardack began developing the Dane Park concept in 2021 and settled on launching the idea in Grapevine and North Garland based in part on his familiarity with that market and the number of dog owners who lived in those communities.
It was in the fall of 2022, after he purchased the properties and launched the Dane Park concept, that Bardack approached Greystar about managing the property. Bardack alleges that in meetings with Greystar, its executives “responded with an enthusiastic endorsement of the strategy, noting that it was original, timely, and offered significant enhanced financial returns because it addressed a large and growing customer segment.”
Bardack explained that the Grapevine and North Garland properties were intended to show that the Dane Park concept works and to raise investor capital to replicate the idea at 100 to 200 other apartment complexes across the country, according to the lawsuit.
In December 2022, Bardack and Greystar entered a leasing and management contract for the Dane Park Grapevine property, which at that time had a 96 percent occupancy rate and an 85 percent lease conversion rate, which meant 85 percent of prospective residents who toured the property signed a lease.
Things went “relatively smoothly at first,” the lawsuit alleges, but by late 2023, staffing turnover and shortages were mounting and associated problems began to manifest, and causing “operations and financial performance at the property to rapidly deteriorate.”
A key loss was the resignation of the “lead maintenance person,” the suit alleges, and the failure of Greystar to hire a replacement.
“The maintenance department employed by Greystar was already understaffed and poorly trained, and thus the loss of the team’s manager caused unaddressed resident work orders to quickly pile up,” according to the lawsuit. “In response, Greystar simply intentionally closed thousands of work orders without actually completing any of the work.”
When residents complained about their still-pending maintenance needs, Greystar’s management staff “routinely stopped answering the office phones during business hours, stopped returning voicemails, and stopped responding to emails.”
“Having no other option, residents began lining-up at the leasing office’s front door before opening hours in a last-ditch effort to speak to Greystar staff about needed repairs, only to be met with locked doors at that office. The residents also regularly heard mocking laughter from the uncaring Greystar employees hiding inside — all of whom had clocked-in as being on the job,” according to the lawsuit.
The alleged negligence also resulted in residents raising billing discrepancies because of “incompetent financial recordkeeping,” Bardack alleges.
The suit alleges Greystar failed to remediate apartment units on the ground floor that suffered flood damage, taking them out of the rental inventory, failed to properly prepare units for new residents moving in, who found their apartments lacked smoke detectors, were “filthy” and had missing or broken fixtures.
One resident complained that there was blood on the walls of the unit she recently moved into, and that she had to clean it after maintenance failed to respond to her requests, according to the lawsuit.
Eventually, the number of prospective tenants touring the property who signed leases plummeted to 15 percent, Bardack alleges, and prompted him to be in “almost daily” communication with Greystar executives about the situation and “forced” him to become a de facto property manager from December 2023 through June 2024.
“In these meetings, and subsequent communications, he pointed out the specific links to this decline and Greystar’s various management failures, which were causing an alarming increase in the number of negative online reviews from current residents,” the suit alleges.
Greystar also allegedly failed to pay the trash collection vendors, prompting the city of Grapevine to call Bardack directly to alert him to the “health and safety hazard” caused by piles of garbage overflowing the dumpsters.
In March 2024, Bardack toured the Grapevine property with potential investors who were considering a $750 million investment in the Dane Park concept.
“The investors withdrew their interest in funding the expansion of the Dane Park Communities for reasons they attributed directly to Greystar’s operational and financial shortcomings,” the suit alleges.
After the occupancy rate of the Grapevine property had dropped to 80 percent, Bardack hired a law firm to investigate the origin of the 41 one-star Google reviews that were posted between January and July 2024.
“Dozens of residents interviewed by the law firm described Greystar’s gross neglect of the residents, as well as willful misconduct and numerous intentional torts by Greystar against Bardack and Dane Park Grapevine,” according to the lawsuit.
On June 4, Greystar terminated the agreement with Bardack and its last day of onsite management was July 11, the “same day the City of Grapevine shut down the Property’s pool for multiple code violations that resulted from Greystar’s gross negligence.”
The case has been assigned to Dallas County District Court Judge Maria Aceves.
Bardack is also represented by Alex Cleeter and Seth Steinke of Gardner Haas.
The case number is DC-25-00269.