It’s not immediately clear Saturday if a Dallas judge will allow a popular Deep Ellum bar forced to close for a week amid public safety concerns to reopen or remain shut.
Dallas County District Court Judge Veretta Frazier is deciding whether to continue a temporary injunction that blocks Rodeo Dallas from reopening its doors or lift the injunction requested by a nearby property owner suing the bar, arguing Rodeo Dallas is too much of a safety risk to customers and the Deep Ellum community to remain open.
Frazier presided over a roughly seven-hour court hearing Thursday. All parties expected a ruling Friday, but midnight came and went.
Online court records show no updated order has been filed as of 9:15 a.m. Saturday.
Political Points
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“I was in Deep Ellum on Friday for about two hours having coffee and multiple people approached me asking what’s going on,” Dallas Mayor Pro Tem Jesse Moreno, who represents the area, told The Dallas Morning News on Saturday morning. “All I could tell them is ‘I’m in the same boat with you, waiting for a decision to be made.’ I still am.”
Dave Wishnew, lead attorney representing Rodeo Dallas, and Ben Riemer, lead attorney representing Asana Partners, the North Carolina-based real estate investment firm that owns 30 properties and six parking lots in Deep Ellum that is suing the bar, didn’t immediately respond Saturday to requests for comment.
Rodeo Dallas co-owner Joseph Ybanez declined comment when reached by a reporter Saturday, deferring to Wishnew for comment.
Riemer sent Frazier a letter Friday suggesting two alternatives if the judge decided not to continue the temporary injunction. One option would be to allow Rodeo Dallas to reopen, but order the business to close at 11 p.m. rather than 2 a.m.
“There is no reason that defendant must stay open until 2:00 a.m.,” Reimer wrote. “We believe that the majority of safety incidents occur after 11:00 p.m., so this may result in significant progress in keeping (the) community safe.”
The other proposal extends the temporary injunction until Friday, Aug. 22, to “give the parties and the court the opportunity to continue to engage in these discussions.”
No response to the letter had been filed as of Saturday morning, according to online court records.
During Thursday’s hearing, city police officers, adjacent business owners, and property owners testified that Rodeo Dallas created an unsafe environment for both its customers and the surrounding neighborhood. The two-year-old bar on the corner of Elm and Crowdus streets, known for its mechanical bull and crowds of hundreds it attracts nightly.
One police officer testified the atmosphere at Rodeo Dallas was so dangerous that cops would not enter unless they had to do so.
At the end of Thursday’s hearing, around 9 p.m., the judge said she needed more time to review the testimony from both sides.
She acknowledged that Ybanez testified the bar was working with the city to improve security—including enhanced staff training and installing metal detectors—and he warned that a prolonged closure could force the bar to shut down permanently, putting its 30-40 employees at risk.
He said the bar reported $8 million in sales last year. But Frazier pointed out that the bar’s impact on the neighborhood seemed serious and that no employees had testified about actually participating in the new security training Ybanez claimed was recently implemented.
At least three dozen Deep Ellum residents, workers, business owners, and property owners packed Dallas’s 44th District Court for the Rodeo Dallas hearing. Others waited outside because there wasn’t enough space inside.
The hearing marks the latest turn in Deep Ellum, the city’s premier entertainment district, where area business owners, workers and residents in recent weeks have demanded Dallas officials do more to crack down on fights, shootings, people openly carrying containers of alcohol and businesses operating outside of city rules.
City officials last issued notice of city code violations to Rodeo Dallas owners on July 30, demanding a series of improvements that need to happen by Aug. 25 or city attorneys would seek a court order to shut down the business.
The city noted 16 alleged crimes tied to the bar between May 2024 and May 2025, from disorderly conduct and public intoxication to aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and murder.
A July 11 inspection revealed Rodeo Dallas was operating as a bar and nightclub, not the restaurant its permit allows. The bar hosts events and profits from alcohol, food and admission, but it hasn’t registered as a commercial promoter or submitted required safety plans. Inspectors also found maintenance problems—damaged walls, ceilings, plumbing, and electrical systems—as well as pest issues and piles of trash.
On Aug. 5, the bar’s landlord, Westdale Real Estate Investment and Management, chained the doors. The owners got a court order the next day to reopen, but on Aug. 8, Asana Partners filed a lawsuit and requested a temporary restraining order, which was granted the same day, shutting down the bar until this week’s hearing on a longer-term injunction.
Attorneys representing Asana Partners argued Thursday that it was common for Rodeo Dallas patrons to be over-served alcohol, for people under 21 to get in, for security not to thoroughly check for guns, for music to exceed city noise limits, and for staff not doing enough to safely manage crowds of hundreds who spill into the streets when the bar closes at 2 a.m.
Asana Partners’ lawyers also argued that even after shootings near Rodeo Dallas—including one in late March where 21-year-old Jonathan Santos was killed outside the bar—Rodeo Dallas’s owners didn’t take serious steps to improve until July, when the city officially ordered them to make changes or risk being sued.
“We simply cannot take the risk of allowing this establishment be open for even one more night,” said attorney Benjamin Riemer. “Because the irreparable harm that we’re talking about in this case is injury and death.”
Rodeo Dallas’s lawyers argued that the bar is being unfairly blamed for Deep Ellum’s public safety issues—problems they say the city should be handling. They pointed out that the bar’s owners are working with city officials to make the required improvements and should get the chance to meet the Aug. 25 deadline without being forced to close.
They also argued that Asana Partners’ request for a temporary shutdown was unjustified, since the city itself isn’t pushing to close the bar. They added that there’s no clear proof shutting down Rodeo Dallas would decrease crime in the area, and that the bar shouldn’t be held responsible for what happens on the streets after hours. Crime in Deep Ellum isn’t concentrated around Rodeo Dallas, they said, but is spread across the entire entertainment district.
“Rodeo Dallas does not control the streets of Dallas or Deep Ellum,” said Wishnew, the business’s attorney told the judge on Thursday. “It does not have a duty to prevent crime.”
Nearby business owners Regino Rojas, who operates Revolver Taco Lounge, and Dan Murry, who owns Armoury and Ruins, disagreed. Both described poor crowd control by Rodeo Dallas as directly contributing to issues in Deep Ellum.
Rojas said he would be inviting “more problems than profits” to keep Revolver Taco open past midnight despite crowds still being in the area because of the issues caused by Rodeo Dallas.
“It’s the responsibility of the people from the barrio or the neighborhood to make sure everybody has a good time and everybody is safe,” Rojas testified Thursday. His taqueria is on the same block as Rodeo Dallas. “Everybody. Not just the cops. It’s all of us.”
Dallas police detective Andres Sanchez, who works to patrol the district while off-duty, and Sr. Cpl. Hannah Moore, who is assigned to help patrol Deep Ellum, said Rodeo Dallas is a significant drain on police resources in the area, requiring near constant monitoring to either try to deter crime or respond to incidents.
“If we’re not there for five minutes, something is going to happen within those five minutes,” said Sanchez, who added later that he felt there was a noticeable difference with Rodeo Dallas closed last week, and cops were able to do more proactive enforcement of city rules and laws.
Moore said she spent “80% to 90%” of her shifts standing across the street from Rodeo Dallas monitoring the bar. She described making multiple arrests of Rodeo Dallas customers who were searched and had weapons or drugs on them, personally being part of an inspection that found six underaged customers being served alcohol at the bar, being part of an inspection that found the club exceeded its more than 500 max occupancy limit, and having to break up fights at or outside the bar.
Moore said she has seen Rodeo Dallas security kick people out of the bar only to instigate and escalate disputes that have turned into fights on the streets, requiring police response.
Both cops said they’ve had to go to a hospital after being injured while breaking up fights at Rodeo Dallas. Moore noted a fight between an employee and two customers in the bar in April 2024 when she was punched and kicked by one of the customers and said another officer with her was assaulted.
“Since that incident, we have made it known that we will no longer go into Rodeo unless we absolutely have to due to the amount of people and how dangerous it is for myself and the other officers on the (Deep Ellum) task force to go in there,” she said.
Ybanez, the Rodeo Dallas co-owner, said he has repeatedly welcomed suggestions for security improvements from the city and the Deep Ellum Foundation. The foundation is a nonprofit manages that the area’s Public Improvement District, handles public and private funds to improve and support the downtown-area neighborhood, and hires off-duty officers to patrol the area.
Ybanez said security regularly scans IDs to verify customers are of age before they get into the bar. He claimed underage patrons had gotten around their system because they were using high-quality fake IDs.
He noted that, in addition to more staff training, they recently added bright overhead lighting outside the bar that kicks on automatically at 2 a.m. to discourage loitering when the business closes. He also mentioned they’ve been using metal barricades instead of velvet ropes to better control lines outside the bar, and security started using metal detector wands to help find more weapons before people get inside the business.
“There has never been a single instance where I’ve said no to something that can make us safer and better for the neighborhood,” Ybanez said. “And that’s a fact, no one can deny that.”
He estimated losses of close to $200,000 because of the court-ordered closure last week. He said he personally wrote checks to hold over a couple of Rodeo Dallas security guards for the week, continued paying managers their salaries and has been trying to get bar staff placed at other businesses while the bar is closed.
Bryan Austin, who owns Club Dada and Off the Record, the two businesses next to Rodeo Dallas, said he felt the closed bar was being unfairly targeted and wasn’t getting enough credit for the steps they’ve taken to address issues thus far.
“The landlords and the city are putting a lot of the onus on Rodeo that I don’t think belongs there,” Austin said, adding later that he would be willing to partner with other business owners to help pay to increase the amount of off-duty police officers to patrol the district.