This St. Pete Beach estate, once Anheuser-Busch titan’s home, is gone
The three buildings on the property from the 1950s have been torn down.

By Bernadette Berdychowski
Tampa Bay Times
Published: Dec 15, 2023

The former winter home of August A. Busch Jr. — the company president who helped turn Anheuser-Busch into the largest beer company in the world — has been demolished.

All that’s left on the St. Pete Beach property on Pass-a-Grille Way is a private marina and a patch of dirt where three homes built in the 1950s once stood.

Local records show the owner of the property applied for a permit to demolish the structures in January. The estate was bought by a company tied to Tampa angel investor Steven MacDonald in 2020 for an undisclosed price. In late November, St. Pete Beach issued a permit giving permission to tear down the homes.

A representative for MacDonald said he was not available to comment.

The estate took up nearly a city block on the Intracoastal Waterway after Busch bought three lots separately to build his compound. Busch visited St. Pete Beach often to be close to the St. Louis Cardinals, a team he purchased in 1953 and had its spring training in downtown St. Petersburg at the time.

It was also near one of his beer company’s breweries with a public park that became a rising Florida attraction: Busch Gardens Tampa.

The estate welcomed many celebrities during Busch’s ownership such as Marilyn Monroe, Frank Sinatra, Arnold Palmer, Joe DiMaggio and Aerosmith lead singer Steven Tyler, according to newspaper archives. Busch also entertained former presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and George H.W. Bush in his St. Pete Beach home.

After the beer titan died in 1989 at 90-years-old, the estate was sold to Tampa beer distributor Arthur Pepin and then to a developer in 1997 who turned it into the Birds of Paradise Boutique Resort for private corporate getaways.

It was on and off the market for nearly a decade after the Great Recession, but then sold for $5.395 million in 2017. Then again in 2020.

So what’s next for the property?

The owner plans to consolidate and build one 23,000-square-foot home on the half-acre site, according to property records. Construction of the house is set to cost $6 million.