DCA Outdoor’s sale-oriented Chapter 11 remains open, but the immediate docket has shifted to contested final professional fees, related discovery, and possible mediation rather than a plan-confirmation process. The court has continued disputes over the final applications of Focus Management Group and Lewis Rice while the parties work toward a scheduling order and consider a mediator, with a further status conference set for August 19, 2026, according to the continued fee-application hearing noticeDkt. 761.
DCA Outdoor and its affiliates began the cases in February 2025 after operating losses left the nursery and landscape-products group unable to carry a capital structure dominated by Frontier Farm Credit. The first-day affidavitDkt. 21 described the financial distress supporting the filing, and the later financing record fixed Frontier’s prepetition secured debt at not less than $96.44 million. Early in the case, the debtors sought a $3 million priming facility from Frontier to fund working capital, payroll, and Chapter 11 costs under a 13-week budget and CRO oversight through the initial DIP financing motionDkt. 84. By fall 2025, that liquidity framework had been replaced with a second, sale-focused facility: the final DIP and cash-collateral orderDkt. 453 authorized up to $6 million of senior secured, superpriority financing, priming liens on substantially all assets, and continued cash-collateral use. The order tied funding to sale milestones running through April 2026, establishing asset dispositions—not a filed plan—as the operative restructuring path reflected in the available record.
Asset recovery also became part of that path. In February 2026, DCA Outdoor sued Valley Hill Tree Farm, an entity associated with its former chief executive, seeking turnover of roughly 360 acres in Kentucky and approximately $8.7 million of tree inventory; the adversary complaintDkt. 1 alleges unauthorized revenue diversion and an invalid lease used to retain estate property. The current docket is now centered on closing-cost and administration disputes: DCA Outdoor joined the U.S. Trustee and Frontier objections to BerganKDV’s final compensation request in its fee objection joinderDkt. 750, and the court will hear that application and three objections on August 19 under the fee-application hearing noticeDkt. 759. That same date is also the next checkpoint for the Focus and Lewis Rice disputes, including discovery issues, a scheduling order, and the potential appointment of a mediator.
