The McCombs family is staring down a courtroom showdown with minority co-owners who say they were quietly squeezed out of a downtown hotel deal while the city was shelling out millions to lease the site. Three Miller siblings have filed suit, asking for more than $5 million in damages and a court-ordered sale of the property. At the heart of the dispute is the former Holiday Inn at 318 W. César E. Chávez Blvd., a city-leased building now operating as a homeless shelter.
According to the San Antonio Express-News, plaintiffs Brant Oser Miller, Jay Robert Miller and Robin Nancy Miller Holbrook say they collectively own roughly 20% of the land and were never asked to sign off before the lease interest was assigned to a McCombs-linked partnership. The siblings peg the property value somewhere between $14.7 million and $44 million and say they were getting about $2,000 a month while the city was paying roughly $4.4 million a year under a sublease. Their filing asks the court for an injunction blocking any sale by the defendants and an order forcing either a partition or sale of the land.
Per the San Antonio Business Journal, the companies listed as defendants include Tierra Mercado LP and 318 W. Cesar Chavez LLC, along with P. Host San Antonio LP, the previous leaseholder. The defense has moved to shift the case from Bexar County district court into the Texas Business Court in San Antonio. Representatives for McCombs Enterprises have told reporters they do not comment on pending litigation.
What the suit alleges
The complaint details a decades-old structure that separates ownership of the land from control of the hotel operation and claims the lease required minority-owner approval before any sublease or assignment, according to the San Antonio Express-News. The Millers say they did not find out about the city sublease until May 20, 2024, and allege that communication from McCombs-linked partners became more limited after the transfers took place.
Background and the city lease
McCombs Enterprises acquired the ground lease for the roughly 4.5-acre tract in early 2024, taking over a building originally developed for the 1968 World’s Fair, according to reporting by the San Antonio Report. In 2023, the City Council signed off on a deal that pays the leaseholder up to $8.8 million to use the building as a low-barrier homeless shelter and provides up to $7.1 million to SAMMinistries to run the facility through October 2025, with options to renew.
Legal implications
The plaintiffs are asking for a forced sale of the property, monetary damages and a permanent injunction to prevent any sale or transfer without their consent, remedies laid out in court filings and reported by the San Antonio Business Journal. If a judge ultimately decides the assignment violated the co-ownership terms, potential outcomes could include unwinding transfers or distributing sale proceeds according to ownership shares, although complex real estate fights like this often lead to lengthy discovery and drawn-out negotiations. Attorneys on both sides have declined to offer detailed public comment while early motions are still in play.
What to watch next
The case now sits in the Texas Business Court, where the near-term pace will hinge on pretrial motions and scheduling in that specialized venue. Observers note that the dispute underscores how aging ground-lease arrangements and modern city partnerships can collide when long-held ownership interests are fragmented and not everyone agrees on who gets a say.
