This article has been updated.
The City of San Antonio on Wednesday filed a lawsuit in probate court to seize a bar owner’s property near Alamo Plaza.
The condemnation petition, filed on behalf of the state General Land Office (GLO), follows several years of failed negotiations with Vince Cantu, owner of Moses Rose’s Hideout, over a sales price for the property.
The Alamo Trust, the nonprofit that oversees the Alamo, has sought to acquire the property for the planned Alamo Visitor Center and Museum.
The probate court will appoint three local landowners to serve as special commissioners, who will determine a price the city must pay for the property. Either side can object to the commissioners’ decision and request a trial.
In March 2020, Cantu priced the property he’s owned since 2015 at nearly $17 million, more than eight times the offer made by the Alamo Trust. The bar is located on East Houston Street around the corner from the Woolworth building, one of the buildings being converted into the museum.
Talks stalled last year and the dispute came to a head in late January when City Council approved an ordinance that allows for the seizure of the property at 516 E. Houston St. through eminent domain.
In March, the city made another offer to Cantu — $4 million plus relocation expenses for the property, up from the Alamo Trust’s $2 million starting offer in July 2020.
Cantu countered that offer with an asking price of $6 million, plus $4 million for the loss of his business.
With no agreement reached, both sides then consented to an independent business valuation appraisal, which found the value of the bar business to be just over $1.2 million.
Based on that figure, in late April, the Alamo Trust announced that the City had made a “best and final” offer of $5.26 million to purchase the bar.
Rejecting the offer, Cantu said that the business appraisal was flawed and didn’t take into account projected future earnings. He called it a “bait and switch” attempt to minimize the value of his business.
“I can’t tell you how disappointed I am with the Alamo Trust, for not only not honoring our agreement, to value my company using the metric we all agreed on,” Cantu said in an email.
A recent report by the San Antonio Current includes a statement from a member of the appraisal firm RSI saying the Alamo Trust told the firm not to include projected revenue in its valuation. However, in an email sent to the publication’s editor in chief, Alamo Trust and the city attorneys, the firm’s member later disputed several elements of the Current’s report.
On May 2, Cantu’s attorney Dan Eldredge filed suit to obtain testimony from the Alamo Trust legal counsel in an effort to prove the Alamo Trust told RSI to limit its evaluation of Moses Rose’s.
Upon filing the condemnation petition on Wednesday, the city released a statement in partnership with the Alamo Trust and GLO:
“Even with this process now moving forward, we still remain open to negotiating with Mr. Cantu outside of court proceedings.”
City Attorney Andy Segovia has said the city will have to prove that the condemnation is for a public purpose.
In this case, the benefit to the community is a “world-class Alamo campus … [with] all the historical resources that allow the community to learn about not only what happened in 1836, but the whole history of that area,” he said.
Eldredge said after reviewing the petition that he doesn’t believe the city has the power to take his client’s property.
“[This document] convinces me all the more that the city does not have the power to take the property and, without that power and having exercised the pre-eminent domain process in a way that was riddled with bad faith, they don’t have the moral high ground either,” he said.
“They’re in for a very long and drawn-out fight.”
