A property on the west side of downtown San Antonio that has ties to the city’s colorful history has hit the market as a redevelopment opportunity for commercial or residential use.

Roalson Interests Inc., a San Antonio-based real estate brokerage, listed the 1.87-acre tract at 503 and 523 Urban Loop for sale. The listing said the property is a redevelopment site that would “suit a variety of commercial or residential uses that are typical in downtown.”

The property, according to the Conservation Society of San Antonio, has historic ties to the Alamo City, first as a brothel in the local red-light district then later as an orphanage and day care center run by the Catholic Church. The Conservation Society said the property, when it functioned as a brothel, once hosted the outlaw gang called the Wild Bunch, including Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. The pair were later immortalized in an Academy Award-winning movie starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford.

Roalson did not list an asking price. The site is one block away from the University of Texas at San Antonio’s downtown campus and about two blocks away from H-E-B's headquarters, according to Roalson.

Bexar County records show the site is owned by DP Miller Investments LLC, a company associated with Douglas Miller, the grandson of Bill Miller, who founded local eatery Bill Miller Bar-B-Q. Douglas Miller bought the complex in 2020, according to CoStar data.

The property’s history goes as far back as 1883 when the main building was part of an area that was a tourist attraction, according to the Conservation Society. The Catholic Church bought the building in 1912 and converted it for the local Mexican-American neighborhood.

The orphanage operated in the Laredito neighborhood of downtown San Antonio for 75 years. Buildings on the property were destroyed by a fire in February 2022.

“It is profoundly sad that one of the city’s last landmarks of Laredito has been burned. It appears that the visual link to an important history has been destroyed,” according to a blog post about the fire on the Conservation Society’s website. “This history includes the only reminder of the City’s Red Light District as well as a century of community care under the Carmelite Sisters and Father Flanagan’s Boys Town.”

A request to label the property as a local historic landmark was rejected by the San Antonio Historic and Design Review Commission in August 2022. 

“This building served as a rare, visible reminder that vice and entertainment played a significant role in the area,” staff with the Historic and Design Review Commission said in a report. “The Carmelite Sisters opened an orphanage and day care in the former brothel in 1914, just two years after the tragic fire that destroyed the nearby St. Joseph’s Orphanage on the grounds of Santa Rosa Hospital, which had been run by the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word."

The commission said the property could not be designated as a historic landmark because the fire in February 2022 destroyed all the buildings on-site.