Texas real estate investor and developer Ali Choudhri filed Chapter 11 petitions in San Antonio for two of his companies, Meandering Bend LLC and Memorial Glen Cove LLC. Shown is the Hipolito F. Garcia Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse at 615 E. Houston. St., where the U.S. Bankruptcy Court is located.
Houston investor and developer Ali Choudhri, who has touted acquiring over $1.2 billion in real estate assets and building the tallest single-family house in the state, is making his way around Texas courtrooms.
Choudhri’s legal issues have taken him to state district courts in Harris and Travis counties, both of Houston’s appeals courts and the Texas Supreme Court.
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A Chapter 7 case playing out in Houston bankruptcy court even landed him in jail for a few days in April after a judge found him in civil contempt of court for failing to turn over records to the trustee administering the case involving Jetall Cos.
Now Choudhri has made his way to San Antonio.
Just this month, he put two more of his companies into bankruptcy — in San Antonio. Why he chose San Antonio to file Chapter 11 cases for the bucolic-sounding Meandering Bend LLC and Memorial Glen Cove LLC, which he had listed as having Austin addresses, wasn’t immediately clear — even to U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Michael Parker.
On Monday, he ordered Choudhri or his lawyer to appear in court Aug. 27 for a hearing to determine whether both cases should be transferred to Austin.
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Ironically, Choudhri filed a Chapter 11 case for another one of his numerous companies, Dalio Holdings LLC, in Austin just days before the filing of the Meandering Bend and Memorial Glen Cove cases — even though Dalio shows a Houston address. Dalio reported assets that includes nearly $20 million owed to it, while its most significant debt is almost $3.5 million from an “arbitration agreement” he’s disputing.
Texas real estate investor Ali Choudhri recently put two of his companies into bankruptcy in San Antonio.
The bare-bones bankruptcy petitions Choudhri filed in the San Antonio cases gave no hint of the companies’ holdings or what led them to seek refuge from creditors. Each filing had boxes checked off showing their assets and liabilities in the range of $1 million to $10 million. Justin Rayome, a Houston lawyer who filed the bankruptcy petitions, didn’t respond to an email seeking comment.
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Litigation over office space that has been ongoing in Houston for more than 13 years may have been the impetus behind the San Antonio bankruptcies.
Before the bankruptcy cases were filed, a court-appointed receiver in the Houston case sought a judge’s approval to take control of Meandering Bend’s and Memorial Glen Cove’s assets and sell them.
The Travis Central Appraisal District shows Meandering Bend, doing business as Austin Monumental Arts, owns a roughly 4,000-square-foot building on about a fifth of an acre at 1011 E. 16th St. It’s been appraised at more than $600,000, but it has a $441,00 mortgage on it, a court filing shows.
Receiver Travis Vargo described the building in the document as “vacant and bare.”
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Memorial Glen Cove owns at least four vacant lots and a residence at 207 Malone St. in Houston that Vargo described as “uninhabitable.” Choudhri has almost $2 million in equity in the properties, according to a filing by Vargo.
Choudhri amended Memorial Glen Cove’s bankruptcy petition on Monday to change its principal place of business from Austin to Kerrville.
And in what must sound all too familiar to Choudhri, Vargo asked a Harris County court to hold Choudhri in civil or criminal contempt for allegedly failing to turn over documents. Vargo sought sanctions of either fines or incarceration.
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Choudhri responded by challenging the court’s jurisdiction and objecting to Vargo’s appointment as receiver. Choudhri also gave notice that he would appeal the issues to the 14th Court of Appeals in Houston.
But Choudhri apparently has not complied with the appeal court’s rules and has been ordered to file a brief by Sept. 18 or risk having the case dismissed.
On Aug. 13, though, Choudhri gave notice that he had moved the Houston state court lawsuit to bankruptcy court in San Antonio. It was a short-lived move.
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On Tuesday, Parker, the bankruptcy judge presiding over Meandering Bend’s case, ruled that the lawsuit couldn’t be moved to San Antonio because Harris County is not within the same federal court district as San Antonio. The judge sent the case back to Harris County. He did the same for a 2023 lawsuit Choudhri moved to the bankruptcy court in the Memorial Glen Cove case.