When the self-made billionaire businessman and philanthropist B.J. “Red” McCombs died Feb. 19 at age 95, his family started planning a small, private funeral.
“That’s not fair,” one of his close friends told Marsha Shields, McCombs’ daughter and successor in the company McCombs started in 1953.
“He belonged to us, too,” she recalls the friend saying.
A week later, hundreds gathered at the Tobin Center for the Performing Arts for a grand sendoff that was attended by hundreds with tributes from state officials, sports figures and the University of Texas Longhorn marching band.
Even as the physical absence of the influential and gregarious McCombs is felt in the community, his spirit remains. His family hopes to keep it that way while ushering in the next era at McCombs Enterprises with new dealerships and major downtown projects.
“We plan this to be a multi-generational enterprise — it should continue,” Shields said. But, “there’s no such thing as status quo. … “We are always pushing to go up. We are always pushing forward.”
A legacy to shepherd
McCombs had slowed down in his last year, Shields said, but he was at the office just three days before he died.
The Northwest Texas native and son of an auto mechanic kept tabs on the company he built from the ground up even after giving control to his three daughters in 2002.
“He started the company in 1953 and said that he wanted to see it reach 100 years,” said Joseph Shields, McCombs’ grandson who goes by Joe. He is the director of business development at McCombs Enterprises.
Realizing he wouldn’t live that long, McCombs turned to Marsha, who has overseen company operations for two decades. “And you’re not, either,” Joe Shields recalled his grandfather telling his mother about living to see the company reach its centennial milestone.
That responsibility would fall to the third generation, McCombs pointed out, who now help run the company’s large and diverse portfolio that includes his San Antonio auto dealerships, growing number of real estate projects and oil and gas ventures.
Two of Joe Shields’ third cousins are also in leadership roles: Easton McNab, director of investment management at McCombs Enterprises, and Carson Rubey, senior wholesaler, Red McCombs Automotive.
In an office building near Monte Vista where McCombs’ priceless collections and memorabilia remain on display, his office chair is vacant. But his likeness and memorable sayings are everywhere.
“That’s definitely a core objective of ours — to carry on his legacy and my grandmother’s legacy,” Joe Shields said.
Cars at the core
The car business is going well, said Marsha Shields, who grew up visiting the dealerships with her dad and discussing the issues of the day at the dinner table. “Joseph did the same with me,” she said.
At one point in the company’s history, McCombs owned 77 dealerships across the country.
Though that has been scaled back due to changes in the way dealerships are owned and managed, car sales remain core to McCombs Enterprises and likely always will be.
“We enjoy it — it’s a good business — we consider it a way to serve customers’ needs … to help them with their transportation needs,” Marsha Shields said.
Pandemic-wrought inventory constraints have only made it better, creating consumer demand that hasn’t really let up, she said.
The company has plans to build from the ground-up three new dealerships, two selling Hyundai models at West Loop 410 and Callaghan Road, another at Interstate 10 West near UTSA Boulevard, and a Genesis store near Fair Oaks.
Like it’s always been, McCombs’ name and image will be there in the dealerships’ ads, Joe Shields said.
A series of billboards featuring McCombs that went up in recent months was an idea that came from Clear Channel, the radio business he founded and developed into a media giant, Joe Shields said. It was a way of honoring his memory.
“All the time in any automotive advertising, we use my grandfather and use his quotes, his words and his vision, and this was just a unique opportunity to turn that around and get quotes from other notable San Antonians about him,” he said.
Longhorns and development
McCombs Enterprises’ oil and gas dealings were sparked when McCombs invested in his first oil well in 1958, Marsha Shields said. These days, the company limits its investments in the energy sector to exploration and development mostly in Texas and New Mexico.
“It’s good business and we think it has a future,” she said.
McCombs also developed over the years a business out of breeding and marketing registered longhorn cattle that he started in 1978.
While a small herd remains on the family’s ranch north of Johnson City, the company held a dispersal sale in May in order to exit that line of business.
“Because the man who was the genius behind the breeding program passed away,” Marsha Shields said of her father, who she said knew every bloodline and personally developed the brand.
McCombs gained that expertise the same way he did everything else: He read and he talked to people, she said. But it was more than a pastime.
“My father did not have hobbies, so once he started being interested in the longhorns and wanting to develop a breeding program, he knew he had to develop a business around it, [otherwise] he wouldn’t enjoy it,” Marsha Shields said.
Another division within McCombs Enterprises manages its land ownership and development. In addition to a recently completed resort property at Lake Travis in Austin, and others in Port Aransas and Rockport, McCombs Properties also oversees industrial development and land master planning.
Tower Life and River Walk
Recently, the company became partners with developers Ed Cross and Jon Wiegand to redevelop from office to residential the 31-story Tower Life Building at 310 S. St. Mary’s St.
The tallest structure in San Antonio when it was constructed in 1929, the distinctive building has eight sides and a green-glazed roof. After McCombs died, a red flag with the “RM” emblem was hoisted to the top of the tower that Joe Shields described as iconic but in need of revival.
“We wanted to be the ones that helped to steward it into its next 100 years,” he said.
The cost to redevelop an old building that meets modern-day needs and standards “is going to be quite a hefty price tag,” Joe Shields said. Historic tax credits from the state will be key to making the project financially viable.
Wiegand said working with the McCombs family has given him an appreciation for Red McCombs’ vision and his efforts to improve the city and the example that set for others.
“This is a long-term partnership with a long-term goal to do a wonderful job with the Tower Life Building, and to operate it,” Wiegand said. “It’s hard to find long-term, community-focused investors and partners, but the McCombs family epitomizes that.”
Earlier this year, McCombs Enterprises also acquired six acres of land that CPS Energy had deemed surplus and put up for sale. The property is situated at Camden Street and West Jones Avenue along the San Antonio River Walk near the Pearl and the San Antonio Museum of Art.
What it will become hasn’t been decided. “But we have an idea that it can become a mixed-use property for the benefit of San Antonio, kind of … a new cultural hub,” Joe Shields said. He wants to develop the entire site at once rather than open a building at a time.
In May, the state passed legislation to make the property a municipal management district, which will allow the private company to direct tax revenue toward the redevelopment of the site.
“It just gives us the opportunity to … be able to charge a line item of taxes to help repay and refund the initial upfront cost of that infrastructure and development that’s going to be necessary to actually get that large of a site going,” he said.
Joe Shields estimated the redevelopment would have a “nine-figure” price tag, but construction won’t start for at least another two years.
Given McCombs’ connection to professional sports in the past — he helped bring the Spurs to San Antonio in 1972 and owned two other pro-sports franchises — some have speculated the land could be earmarked for a new downtown Spurs arena or Missions baseball stadium.
“Never say never, but that is not the consideration right now,” Joe Shields said. It likely wouldn’t fit anyway, Marsha Shields said.
Joe Shields said he especially likes the idea of moving the Spurs from the AT&T Center into the urban core and, when he looks at a map, sees several viable places in downtown San Antonio to build an arena.
But McCombs Enterprises is not involved in those discussions, Joe Shields said.
Any family-owned business comes with its challenges, but Marsha Shields said it has been mostly rewarding.
“I can’t tell you how special it was for me that most of my adult life I got to work with my father,” she said. “I think if he were here today, he would express the same thing — that he took great joy in working with me but even more with Joseph, when Joseph came.
“He loved the idea of having family who want to work.”
The McCombs Foundation is a financial supporter of the San Antonio Report. For a full list of business members, click here.
