UPDATE: Since this story was published, Billy Busch has submitted his proposal to buy Grant's Farm and the Saint Louis Zoo Association has withdrawn its offer. Click the links for more:
- Saint Louis Zoo Withdraws Offer to Buy Grants Farm
- Billy Busch's Plan for Grant's Farm Is All About Family—And Beer
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Photography by John Fedele
Billy and Adolphus Busch
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Photography by Kevin A. Roberts
Trudy Busch Valentine and Peter Busch
The best beer salesman who ever lived was born on March 28, 1899. August A. Busch Jr., better known to the adoring public as Gussie, helped keep the brewery his grandfather co-founded afloat through Prohibition as hundreds of competitors foundered and drowned. It was his idea to celebrate the repeal by delivering cases of Budweiser to the president in a gleaming red wagon pulled by eight Clydesdales. A fierce competitor, Gussie bludgeoned Schlitz and Pabst in a decades-long marketing war, making Bud truly the King of Beers. In 1953, he bought the Cardinals to keep the team from moving to Milwaukee and guided the franchise to three World Series titles. The combination of baseball and beer made Gussie himself a sort of king, the closest thing to royalty this Midwestern city has ever known. He made a queen of his third wife, Trudy, moving with her into the mansion his father built at Grant’s Farm, the estate once owned by the Civil War general and president. He and Trudy hosted all manner of celebrities and dignitaries there at opulent parties, the stories of which have become legend. He opened the property to the public in 1954, further endearing himself to the community and adding to the Busch legend. Gussie liked living in an amusement park so much, he built more, and Busch Gardens became the second-largest chain of theme parks in the country, behind Disney. All the while, he kept Budweiser in first place.
The best beer salesman who ever lived died on September 29, 1989. His 78-page will should be required reading for students of St. Louis history. It’s loaded with little golden nuggets, like in the section describing his chattels, legalese for stuff other than land or money, when Gussie refers to “the painting by O.E. Berninghaus entitled ‘The Sleighing Party,’ which, if located in Switzerland at the time of my death, is to be returned immediately to my personal representatives.” But if the will provides a voyeuristic look at the trappings of wealth, it also offers clues to darker aspects of Gussie’s life. An astute reader will recognize that August Busch III, Gussie’s eldest son and successor at the brewery, who was fed a sip of Budweiser before he tasted mother’s milk, is given just one thing: a golden telegram that was passed to Gussie by his father. All within a few awful years in the ’70s, Gussie’s young daughter Christina died in a car accident, sending her father into a deep depression; Trudy left Gussie, ending his longest marriage; and August III threw his father out of the brewery in a boardroom coup, precipitating his disinheritance and forcing everyone else in the family to choose sides in the father-son battle. Gussie left most of his stock and property to his children from his marriage to Trudy, the family who had grown up at Grant’s Farm. The will makes it clear that of all Gussie’s possessions, he loved the farm most. He devotes seven pages to it, a section that begins, “I am attached to almost all of the family property because it has been in the Busch family for many years, and Grant’s Farm has been my home and the home of my father…”
In June 2013, I drive to Belleau Farm, the Busch family’s 1,500-acre duck-hunting retreat in St. Charles, to meet Adolphus Busch IV, Gussie’s second son and the eldest of the seven children (six surviving) from his marriage to Trudy. St. Louis knows the Busches, but as generations passed, the familiarity has become more general than specific, the branches of the tree too numerous and tortuous to follow. In that context, I saw Adolphus as an enigma. He had a way of making headlines, such as when he publicly resigned from the National Rifle Association over the group’s unwillingness to consider gun control. But at the same time, in light of the key role he’d played in St. Louis history, I felt that Adolphus was relatively unknown. When InBev orchestrated its $52 billion hostile takeover of Anheuser-Busch in 2008, ending 150 years of Busch family brewing heritage and costing hundreds of St. Louisans their jobs, Adolphus had been the lone family member to aid the foreign conglomerate. He’d done it because it was best for shareholders but also to take revenge against August III for mistreating their father decades earlier. In short, I thought that Adolphus would make an interesting subject for a profile.
Belleau sits on the Mississippi River, in the flight path of two-thirds of the country’s migrating birds. Its mile-long driveway leads around a pond to the shooting lodge, where Adolphus has lived for many years. He greets me at the front door donning his signature Belleau Farm visor, which bears images of a duck, a turkey, and a deer, the animals that come here to die. He offers a tour of the house, rebuilt in ’93 after the great flood. “What you are going to see is a lot of dead animals,” he says. In the living room, I divert my eyes from the heads and horns on the wall long enough to notice a stripper pole. “People exercise on that,” he explains. There’s also a calendar that shows nude models posing around the farm, which Adolphus produces each year and distributes to the surrounding duck clubs, whose membership is a who’s-who of St. Louis. Framed on the wall in the hallway is a photo of Adolphus with Prince Charles while playing polo, a meeting of royal heirs. To see the rest of the property, we hop into a Jeep. Everything at the farm is tailored to duck hunting. There are several rest ponds for the birds, whole fields of corn left unharvested for the fowl to eat, and well-appointed blinds for hunters (think World War II bunker–meets–penthouse).
August III lives next door at Waldmeister Farm, and Adolphus drives to that end of the property so we can peek at his half-brother’s new house. “It’s, like, 13,000 square feet, and it’s got one bedroom,” Adolphus says. August is famously unsociable, so there’s no need for guest rooms, apparently. Adolphus has never been inside. I ask whether he goes to his brother’s birthday parties. “Sometimes,” Adolphus says. “I went to his 50th.” That was 27 years earlier. In fact, this property line was the site of a famous argument between the brothers regarding Gussie’s ouster—a fruitless discussion, to put it mildly.
Back in the house, we sit down for an interview. Before I can get out the first question, Adolphus asks me to turn off my tape recorder. Rather than a profile, he has a different story in mind: Big changes are coming to Grant’s Farm. For 60 years, Anheuser-Busch has run the farm as a free public attraction. Thousands of people flock there every summer to see the famous Budweiser Clydesdales and sip free beer samples in the courtyard at the Bauernhof, a massive structure erected by Gussie’s father, built in the traditional Bavarian style, right down to the stork statues placed on the roof of the stalls and carriage house for good luck. A tram ride takes visitors through the deer park where Gussie once killed an elk who made a pass at wife Trudy. There are elephants, kangaroos, and camels. Enduring a bite from a Grant’s Farm goat is a St. Louis rite of passage.
As set out in Gussie’s will, the farm is owned by a trust whose beneficiaries were “the children of my marriage to Gertrude Buholzer Busch”: Adolphus and his five younger siblings. For years, the Busches have been losing money at Grant’s Farm. The brewery pays about $1 million per year to lease the public parts of the farm; the family keeps private what they call “the Big House” and the 22 acres surrounding it. Expenses for staffing and upkeep at the mansion total roughly $1.5 million annually. Even with the revenue from A-B, each sibling must chip in tens of thousands of dollars each year to keep the farm running. Adolphus recognizes that this might not engender much sympathy. Why shouldn’t millionaires have to pay to maintain their own mansion? But the way Adolphus sees it, the roughly 225-acre property, together with the artwork in the house, is worth $50 million. “As an asset, you should be getting a pretty good return on something like that,” he reasons. He’d always thought that August III had lowballed them on the lease, and negotiations have only gotten tougher since InBev took over.
As beneficiaries, the siblings have no say over the administration of the trust, including the lease negotiations. Only the trustees can make these decisions. In his will, Gussie named four trustees to the real estate trust. One—his fourth wife, Margaret—preceded him in death. Two individual trustees remained: Adolphus and Lou Susman, Gussie’s longtime lawyer, plus Centerre Bank as corporate trustee. For years Adolphus had been pushing them to wring more money from A-B, but because he was also a beneficiary—an “interested trustee,” in legalese—he was mostly powerless. Then, in 2009, Susman resigned as trustee when President Barack Obama appointed him ambassador to the United Kingdom. That left the trust in an odd situation. The bank became the only trustee with power to control the real estate. But as the only remaining individual trustee, Adolphus had the sole discretion to fire the corporate trustee, which through a series of mergers had become Bank of America. A couple of months ago, he did just that, bringing in Wells Fargo to play hardball with A-B InBev.
Adolphus tells me a story. Back in 2008, when InBev purchased the brewery, the company’s Brazilian CEO, Carlos Brito, had been accosted by an elderly woman, who asked, “Mr. Brito, what are you going to do with Grant’s Farm?” He answered, “We are going to keep the operations of Grant’s Farm going just the way it is.” Since then, InBev has laid off hundreds of employees and sold off Busch Gardens, among other properties. But Brito has kept his promise regarding Grant’s Farm, at considerable expense. Between free admission, free beer, and the lease with the family, the brewery has operated the farm at a considerable loss, approximately $3.5 million per year. Now, Adolphus wants to find out what Grant’s Farm is really worth to InBev.
What value could this multinational corporation possibly see in running the farm? “You can’t apply any kind of basic or sophisticated business principle to that question,” Adolphus says. If you look at the farm as a marketing tool, why keep this one, which has only a regional impact, when the company jettisoned national attractions? How many extra cases of Budweiser are sold each year because of the goodwill generated by Grant’s Farm? Less than $3.5 million worth. Adolphus plans to ask A-B InBev for even more, and he expects that they’ll say no.
If the brewery doesn’t want to pony up more cash and Wells Fargo terminates the lease, Adolphus thinks the family could run the farm in a more profitable way. Between the Bauernhof and the Big House, it could become a sought-after event venue. With Anheuser-Busch no longer monopolizing the property, every big corporation in St. Louis could become a Grant’s Farm sponsor. Would it still be open to the public? Possibly. Would they charge for admission? Unclear. “Nobody in the family is going to vote for having it look like a Six Flags,” he says, “but what can you add out there to justify an attendance fee? What can you do without commercializing it so much that it ruins the look of the place?”
And don’t forget, his younger brother Billy has gotten back into the brewing business with Kräftig. “The family argues the point back and forth. Where is the legacy? Where is the heritage?” Adolphus says. “If you look at Billy’s company, now that’s another way of looking at the heritage and where Grant’s Farm ends up down the road. My No. 1 wish is that he would buy it.”
Over the following year, Adolphus and I speak by phone intermittently. Each time, he says negotiations with the brewery are imminent, but then they keep being postponed. On one call, he mentions the possibility of adding an estate walk, on which VIP guests could stroll through the private 22 acres, which would help the family for tax purposes. On another, he says the siblings hope that a more generous lease would allow them to put profits into an endowment so the property could continue “in perpetuity” after the six of them die. Otherwise, he warns, it might have to be sold off to developers. When we speak in early 2014, he drops a bombshell: “Another thing that is very confidential but very, very exciting is that the [Saint Louis Zoo] and [zoo president and CEO] Jeffrey Bonner have expressed an enormous amount of interest in partnering with us at Grant’s Farm in some way, shape, or form.” By mid-2014, things are beginning to take shape. Negotiations with A-B InBev are slow, but two alternatives have crystallized: Both Billy and the zoo plan to offer to buy the farm.
In November 2014, we meet for lunch at Prasino, in St. Charles. When I arrive, Adolphus is at the bar, wearing his visor and drinking from a bottle of Kräftig. He’s about to leave for his winter home in Florida, where he spends time scuba diving and spearfishing. He also tells me about the ranch in Idaho where he spends his summers. I ask about the negotiations. “We didn’t get anywhere near what we wanted to get,” he says. A-B InBev had said that it already loses too much money at the farm for a major increase in the lease. It had kicked in an extra $50,000 and agreed to the estate walks. Both sides saw it as a temporary arrangement, with a sale to either the zoo or Billy imminent. Between the two deals, Adolphus says, the family’s preference is the zoo. “There are some family members who don’t think that Bill is at this point capable of doing it, because they’re not sure that his brewery will be ultimately a success,” he explains. “I am leaning more toward him than I am toward the zoo. But whoever comes up with the best offer is going to end up with the place.” He says either sale will likely be for the 198-acre parcel that’s now open to the public, with the private 22 acres going to either the zoo or Billy when the last of the six siblings dies. He thinks $40 million would be a good starting price.
“Of course, Jeffrey Bonner thought that he could get it pretty much donated by the family,” Adolphus says. “That’s just not going to work.” Some siblings had expressed an interest in donating part of the purchase price back to the zoo. Adolphus was not among them. “No,” he says. “I want to be bought out of all of it—not just the 198 but the 22 acres. I’ve been working toward that for quite a while.”
In the meantime, he’d begun turning the private residence into a business. Over the objection of some of his siblings—particularly sisters Beatrice and Trudy—Adolphus has launched BuschFamilyEstate.com, offering the Big House, the adjacent tennis courts, and the front lawn for fundraisers, dinners, and weddings. “The two women are virtually impossible to deal with,” he says. At one point, he told them to either buy him out or sue him. Just the day before our lunch, the corporate trustee set up a conference call to help the siblings hash out their differences. Neither sister joined, instead sending their attorneys. Adolphus and his brother Peter had been sitting in a duck blind, and they hung up a few minutes in.
“It’s family, you know?” Adolphus says. “How big a family do you have?”
I tell him that I’m an only child.
“You lucky son of a gun.”
It isn’t until several months later, midway through 2015, that Billy and the zoo officially make their respective offers, which are each in turn updated several times. Billy initially offers $17.5 million for the 198-acre property, plus another $6.5 million for the Big House property. When the idea of selling the mansion is met with sibling opposition, he drops it. He also increases his price for the 198 acres, first to $21.5 million and then to $24,185,500. That amount is a 10 percent discount from the zoo’s price—which, Billy argues, is fair because his offer has other advantages: He would give his siblings the opportunity to use the Bauernhof to host events to offset the costs of upkeep at the Big House. Most important, Billy’s offer includes no contingencies.
The zoo offers to purchase the farm for $26,875,000. It will also buy an additional 50 acres across Grant Road from the farm, where the parking lot and Clydesdale barn are located, which is owned individually by sibling Andy Busch. The zoo’s purchase will be funded by a donation from A-B. To operate the park, which the zoo estimates would cost between $4 million and $8 million per year, it would need to raise a sales tax or another form of public funding. In a series of emails in October, Jeffrey Bonner tries to assuage the family’s concerns, hoping to gain unanimous support. With each passing missive, Bonner’s frustration with delays and family squabbles seems more apparent.
In a letter on October 14, Bonner offers a position on the zoo’s board to ensure that the family will have continued input. “We understand the strong desire of the family to jealously guard its legacy,” Bonner writes. To that end, he proposes an exhibit at the farm celebrating the Busch family’s history. “Grant’s Farm is a community treasure,” he notes. “Closing it to the public would be a blow to all of us.” He closes by emphasizing that time is of the essence. “The brewery has made it absolutely clear that their willingness to fund the purchase of Grant’s Farm may not extend very long into the future,” he writes. “I’m afraid this is very much a ‘now or never’ situation for us.”
On October 21, he sends another letter to the family, explaining why the zoo favors a sales tax. “First and foremost, according to tax campaign experts, in the hierarchy of taxes people dislike income tax the most, property tax second most, and sales tax the least of the three. ” Also, the Kansas City Zoo recently passed a sales tax, providing a nice bit of precedent. Again, he closes by saying time is running short. Pulling this off requires the cooperation of important people, he says: “They don’t want to close Grant’s Farm. They’re going to start asking what the heck is holding us up.”
In a third letter, on October 29, Bonner tries to summarize all the zoo has done to address "each and every family member’s concerns.” Mostly, he discusses proposals from Billy to have Kräftig partner with the zoo. Would the zoo grant Kräftig exclusive marketing rights instead of A-B InBev? No. That might jeopardize the gift from A-B InBev. Would the zoo lease the deer park from Billy, should he buy the farm? No. Even at Billy’s proposed cost of $1 per year, Bonner says, leasing part of the farm would not be practical.
At the beginning of the discussions, the siblings were split on which offer they preferred. Adolphus remained neutral as a trustee, but as a beneficiary, he joined Billy and Peter in supporting Billy’s proposal. Beatrice, Trudy, and Andy backed the zoo. But over time, Peter has changed sides, giving a four-vote majority to the zoo. Of course, the siblings, as beneficiaries, have no say in any sale of the farm. That decision is left to the sole remaining disinterested trustee, Wells Fargo. After careful consideration, it too decides that the zoo’s offer is superior. On November 10, because Adolphus and Billy cannot be persuaded, Trudy, Beatrice, Peter, and Andy file suit in the city’s probate court to force the sale to the zoo. They have, ultimately, taken Adolphus’ ultimatum: They’ve sued him. Their petition pulls no punches in laying out their case.
The siblings’ lawyers write that the zoo’s proposal “is the best offer by a significant margin.” They go on to explain that selling to the zoo represents “the only solution that will permit Grant’s Farm to be operated and maintained for the long term for the benefit of the public as it has been for the past sixty-one years, consistent with Mr. Busch’s intent…” For 25 years, the siblings fought over what to do with the farm. Previous efforts to buy it, by Adolphus and Peter in 2004 and by the National Park Service in 2010, failed. The majority of the siblings argue that the zoo offer represents the last best chance to find an amicable solution.
The petition offers this harsh assessment of Billy’s offer: “Given the significant annual costs incurred by Anheuser-Busch in operating Grant’s Farm, it is highly unlikely that William would be able to sustain the operation of an animal preserve, open to the public and free of charge, on a long-term basis… It is doubtful that William’s new brewing company could be a benefactor of the necessary magnitude to meet the demands of such an operation.” It goes on to blast Billy’s plan for being too vague and argues that he isn’t qualified to run an animal park. Unlike the zoo, which has been around for a century and will be for centuries more, Billy has no plan for extending operations of the farm beyond his lifetime, his siblings allege.
And oh, by the way, “the purchase price offered by William is lower than that offered by the Zoo and well below the appraised value of Grant’s Farm. While this is only one concern of several, and clearly not the primary concern, it underscores that his offer is not in the best interests of the beneficiaries.”
The first hearing in the case, to set a schedule for the trial, is held on November 23. Billy wears a blue blazer, Adolphus green. None of the other siblings comes, though together the family sends enough lawyers to play a basketball game. Adolphus has two attorneys, one representing him as a beneficiary, the other as a trustee. Robert Selsor, of the Polsinelli law firm, speaks first on behalf of the plaintiffs. He asks that the trial be scheduled as soon as February, because time is running out for the zoo to get a tax initiative on the ballot. He argues that separate from the juicy details of the family drama, this is actually a simple trust case. At issue is whether Wells Fargo has the authority to sell the property to the zoo. If so, end of story. Selsor takes several more minutes to deride the other side for waging a public relations war.
Since news of the suit broke in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Adolphus and Billy have given numerous interviews. Selsor says that Adolphus’ conduct as a trustee, including his public pledge to back Billy financially, is “beyond the pale.” Probate Commissioner Pat Connaghan isn’t impressed with this line of argument, saying, “The media stuff is not going to come in here. This is a trust case and a pretty simple one.” In response, Billy’s attorneys ask for a later date, citing the need to prepare and the impending holidays. A few days later, Connaghan announces that the trial will be held March 28 and 29.
Outside the courtroom, Adolphus explains that he’s ultimately decided to support Billy because he feels that the zoo hasn’t been transparent about its relationship with A-B InBev and because their father wanted to keep Grant’s Farm in the family. Of his siblings, he says, “They are going against their father’s wishes. Whether they want to admit it or not, that’s what they are doing.”
Billy invites me to his office the next week. He wears a Kräftig belt and offers me a bottle when I arrive. Compared with the grandeur that surrounded his father, Billy’s digs are humble, a nondescript building in an out-of-the-way industrial part of Brentwood. The walls in the hallway are lined with awards won by his “purity brewed” beer. Billy is handsome, blond-haired and blue-eyed, with an easygoing, likable demeanor.
Some of his siblings might object, but he seems to be the one who loved growing up at Grant’s Farm best. He thinks fondly of riding horses through the property with his parents, even though most of the rides were cut short when fastidious Gussie spotted a weed that needed pulling or a fence that needed painting. He’d order his children off their mounts and set them to their chores. “It was hard to get a lot of schoolwork done, growing up at Grant’s Farm, because as soon as I got home, I was outside hanging out with the animals,” Billy says. He spent the most time with the elephants, especially one named Tessie. When Billy was about 10, they developed a bond; she’d wrap him in her trunk and whistle to him. In the ’80s, he worked at the farm as an elephant trainer, preparing the animals for shows. That’s when he met his wife, the monkey trainer. So when critics say Billy isn’t experienced at running an animal preserve, they may be selling him short.
No surprise: Billy’s pitch for Grant’s Farm is all about family. His grandfather bought Grant’s Farm in 1903. His father opened it to the public because he wanted to share the place’s charm. And now, Billy wants to carry that tradition on for a third generation. “My hope and my wish, if I’m fortunate enough to get Grant’s Farm, would be to continue it very much as it has been in the past,” he says. When news of the potential sale broke, the response was nearly unanimous: Don’t change Grant’s Farm! To that end, Billy plans to keep the Clydesdales and the free beer samples. He’d just pour Kräftig, not Bud. He’d add a small demonstration brewery, so people can see how Kraftig is made. He plans to continue free admission but can’t rule out charging a fee, $10 or so.
The zoo, by contrast, would change too much, he says. Their plans call for a high-ropes course and a sky ride. “I’m sure they’re one of the best zoos in the world, but I don’t think we need another zoo in St. Louis,” he posits. “The zoo is talking about putting in all this concrete, all these structures, all this fencing and walls. I just see it really affecting the integrity and the charm of the place.” If he buys the farm, Billy says, he’d be open to partnering with the zoo. “The unfortunate thing about it is, they haven’t been very flexible with me, because they have decided to partner with InBev,” he adds.
When asked about his siblings’ claims that his business isn’t successful enough to support Grant’s Farm, he points to double-digit sales growth every year since he founded the company. Plans are still in the works for a large-scale brewery in St. Louis. “We see that we are going to have success,” Billy says. He believes that buying Grant’s Farm could be a huge boost to Kräftig, propelling his business in the same way buying the Cardinals helped his dad send Budweiser to No. 1.
And what about his siblings’ concern that the farm could fall into the hands of developers after he dies? Billy says he would set up a family board of directors to make decisions for the future of the farm. His deal would be much better for his brothers and sisters, Billy reiterates, because they could make money at the Bauernhof to help pay for the costs of running the Big House, which will become even more burdensome once the lease money from A-B InBev stops. On a personal level, it hurts that his siblings don’t believe in him. “Hell, I get their side,” he says, “but does it bother me that they don’t have the faith in me and the respect for Dad’s will, which says he clearly wants it to go to one or more of his kids, to sell it to me? Deep down, yes, it does.”
In light of that level of conviction, I’d found it surprising when a few days earlier, Adolphus told me that he and Billy had been willing to settle and accept the zoo’s offer, if only they’d agree to give away samples of Kräftig next to the samples of Budweiser. Billy confirms this. He says the whole fight could have been avoided if A-B InBev hadn’t made their $27 million donation contingent on having exclusive rights to pour samples at the farm.
A-B InBev later denies this, saying the company's donation would not be contingent on anything. “Should the Saint Louis Zoo and the Busch Family Trust agree to the sale of Grant’s Farm, Anheuser-Busch will offer a donation to both help with the expansion of the St. Louis Zoo and to entrust Grant’s Farm’s future to the care and guidance of this world-renowned organization,” says Julia Mize, vice president of beer category and community. “If the zoo purchases the property, their organization will become the sole decision-maker for operations. Any donation or sponsorship payment by Anheuser-Busch would be for charitable purposes or advertising and marketing purposes only and would not be tied in any way to beer sales.”
For Billy, the bottom line is carrying on the Busch family's heritage. “Five generations of Busches led that company and grew it to be the largest and most successful brewery in the world,” Billy says emphatically. “InBev has it now, and it’s no longer an American company. I just think to continue to sell out to foreign companies is something I’d like to stop in our family. This is the last remaining historical place that our family possesses. To sell out that last thing is something that I’m totally against.”
Perhaps it was because Jeffrey Bonner drank a Coca-Cola this morning, when he usually avoids caffeine. Maybe it’s because I’ve given him a reprieve, at least with my first question, from talking about the Busch family’s squabble. Or maybe it’s just that he loves animals. In any case, when I ask him to share his dream for Grant’s Farm, he explodes with excitement, nearly taking up the whole hour that he and association board president Matthew Geekie have set aside to meet with me. “It was about what we could do for Grant’s Farm and the community,” he says, “but it was also very much what we could do for the zoo.” The biggest challenge the zoo faces is space. There’s no room left in Forest Park, but the zoo desperately needs large open space for breeding.
Buying Grant’s Farm would help the zoo make sure that its animals have enough kids so your grandkids will have animals to look at in the future. Many of the animals at the zoo are part of species survival plans, whose goal is to maintain 90 percent genetic variability a century into the future, using what amounts to a computerized animal dating service. Take the cheetah as one example. Only a handful of U.S. zoos are successful at breeding the cats. Females select their mates by checking out several males, which requires considerable room, like the open fields at Grant’s Farm. If more breeding programs aren’t started, the computers predict, the cheetah will be gone from American zoos within the next 50 years.
Beyond simply keeping the zoo stocked with animals, the purchase would boost the zoo’s worldwide conservation efforts. If the zoo buys Grant’s Farm, Bonner says, it could save species that will otherwise go extinct. Take the addax as one example. It’s a big antelope with spiraling horns. It used to be found across the Sahel in Africa but is now in just one park, created in part by the Saint Louis Zoo. Even there, the numbers are dwindling. Soon, there won’t be any left in the wild. “There will be other kinds of gazelles, but this is the one that we think is just magnificent,” Bonner says. “If we don’t have animals in meaningful numbers, we will never be able to reintroduce them back to this park. That requires space.” The list goes on: The golden white-eye saipan. The Somali wild ass. The Guam kingfisher. Buying Grant’s Farm could help the zoo save them all.
As for the guest experience, Bonner says, a tram ride similar to what’s offered now would take visitors past free-ranging animals, just a much wider diversity of them. They would carve out a big portion of the farm to serve as a night zoo, which Bonner says would be the first of its kind in the Western Hemisphere. Grant’s Farm has always been a family attraction, but this way adults could come at night, enjoy a cold beer, and see nocturnal animals who doze during daytime zoo visits. For children, Bonner says, the zoo would take the area around the Bauernhof and create a series of exhibits that explore where food comes from. “Children these days are three generations removed from the farm. They know milk comes from cows, but I bet you none of them have ever seen it come from a cow,” he says. Farm hands could shear sheep and spin wool. School classes could plant gardens and visit throughout the year to track their plants’ progress. Kids would still have the opportunity to be nibbled by a goat. Yes, Bonner likes the idea of doing a high-ropes eco challenge, taking visitors back to the days when kids climbed trees, but sure, maybe a sky ride would be too flashy, as Billy says. The zoo would continue the free beer samples and keep the Clydesdales. They’d like to keep the admission price at zero, but as Bonner puts it, “we can’t take anything off the table.”
When the conversation shifts to tax initiatives and legal battles, Geekie takes the lead. He says the letters from Bonner were leaked to the media prematurely; the zoo hasn’t settled on any particular course for raising public money. First, they plan to seek community input. “It’s an imperative for us to listen to the public, to our fellow citizens, to our civic and elected leaders,” Geekie says. As long as the Busch siblings are fighting in court, the zoo will take a wait-and-see approach. That seems like a departure from the this-needs-to-be-done-yesterday tone of Bonner’s letters. At least for this year, A-B will continue to run Grant’s Farm. “We’ve been around for over 100 years. We’re going to be around for another 100 years,” Bonner says. “We have the time to do it right—but we only have one opportunity really to do it right.”
The financing for the plan is complex. A-B InBev will pay for the sale through a donation. Private donors will contribute the money for buildings and other infrastructure. That might seem ambitious, but the zoo is confident that a fundraising campaign for Grant’s Farm, something that’s never been done before, would be successful. Then the money for operations will come from some form of public support. What happens if the sale to the zoo wins in court but then the tax initiative, sales or otherwise, fails to gain the approval of voters? “Well, I think it may well fall apart at that point in time, but that’s way down the road,” Geekie admits.
I ask about what Billy’s said. Is it really true that the two sides came within a couple of Kräftig tap handles of a settlement? Geekie explains that the zoo has tried to accommodate Billy and Kräftig. They’ve offered to sell Kräftig beer at the zoo, which has 3.2 million annual visitors. They’ve offered to sell Kräftig at Grant’s Farm. And they’ve offered to name the Elephant Woods area of the zoo after the Busches. I don’t want to split hairs, I say, but none of the options listed includes giving free samples of Kräftig away at Grant’s Farm. “That is a distinction,” Bonner says.
But, he stresses, the zoo has a great relationship with all of the Busch siblings, as it did with their forbears. He calls Billy a “great conservationist.” Unlike in his letters, he doesn’t rule out working with Billy down the line at Grant’s Farm, should Billy ultimately purchase the property. “Say we wanted to just do the Somali wild ass, and we asked him if we could put them on what would then be his property. He would probably just jump at the chance,” Bonner says. “There has always been a good working relationship between Grant’s Farm and the zoo, and there always will be.”
On a damp Monday in late November, I meet Adolphus at Grant’s Farm for a tour of the Big House. The name is literal: The 32,000-square-foot mansion has 34 rooms. We start in the pantry, which Adolphus says was Gussie’s second-favorite room in his later years. “He always sat in this chair right here and held court,” he says. I notice that there are two beer taps at the far end of the room, both dispensing Kräftig.
The dining room table, with nine leaves, seats 22 people. Adolphus says sit-down dinners for as many as 60 people can be held when additional round tables are brought in, and for a stand-up cocktail party, the house can accommodate 100. Larger events can be held on the tennis court, which they tent. Hanging above the dining room table are some of Gussie’s favorite chattels, two famous paintings by Charles Ferdinand Wimar: Attack on an Emigrant Train and The Abduction of Daniel Boone’s Daughter. Philip Anschutz has offered to buy the paintings for close to $10 million for his American Museum of Western Art. Adolphus would like to make the sale, but his siblings object.
The most impressive part of the house is its central staircase, adorned with a stained glass window that depicts a stag standing in a forest. To either side of the windows are more paintings, mostly by Oscar Berninghaus, a friend of Adolphus’ grandfather. Beneath a coffee table in the living room rest several stacks of thick red photo albums. In their heyday, Gussie and wife Trudy hosted countless celebrities and politicians here for legendary parties. The Big House entertained the likes of Frank Sinatra, Harry Truman, Stan Musial, and Yul Brynner. Across the room, on a piano, sits a photo of Adolphus’ sister Christina, who was killed in a car accident as a child. When Adolphus’ mother is visiting, she places fresh flowers there each day.
Next, we walk into the “secret” gun room. A central table has hosted epic games of Gin and Honors, the Busch family’s preferred card contest. A cabinet holds much of the family’s famed gun collection. And the walls are loaded with mounts, including an elk that Adolphus boasts “is scored No. 3 in the world for nontypical elk.” Two passenger pigeons, the only pair of the extinct birds in a private collection, are held in a glass case. Off the secret room is Gussie’s office, where he used to meet with Cardinals manager Whitey Herzog. Adolphus takes me upstairs to see more paintings, then outside to show me the “cottage,” another mansion that was built for his grandmother after her husband died.
Though there might be some argument about which Busch loves Grant’s Farm the most, there’s no debate about which likes it least: Adolphus. He couldn’t understand why anyone would open this beautiful estate to the public, ruining the family’s privacy. He felt like a monkey in a cage. And living in the Big House meant he could never escape the fight between his dad and his half-brother—everyone had to choose a side. He escaped to Belleau whenever he could. As a trustee, he’s paid a six-figure salary for managing the property, in addition to an initial $1 million payment. In a way, Adolphus went into the family business—not brewing, but being a Busch. It’s been a full-time job for decades, and he’s sick of it.
I ask whether he thinks his siblings would submit to an interview. He goes through them one by one. Andy, he says, is motivated by self-interest, because he stands to make more money on the zoo deal by selling the 50-acre parcel across the road, which he owns by himself. Peter probably wouldn’t talk, either, “even though he is the most logical one,” because he changed his mind on the deal and can’t explain why. Trudy won’t talk, he says, because “she has no reason to not accept Billy’s offer, except for personal dislike of him.” And Beatrice, he says, would be too embarrassed about siding against Billy to speak publicly.
But if I do talk to them, Adolphus would like to suggest a question: Why don’t the four of them just buy him and Billy out? The will clearly states that if a group of siblings buys the property, the trust ends. Then they could sell to the zoo, and there’s nothing Adolphus and Billy could do to stop them. The two brothers would each take $7 million for their share of the place, which Adolphus thinks is low. “You spend $14 million, you turn around and get the $27 million from the zoo, you pocket the difference,” he says.
The following Friday, I receive a call from Andy Busch and his sister Trudy Busch Valentine. They’ve grown tired of reading what they believe to be misinformation spread by their brothers, and they’d like to set the record straight. They, too, have fond memories of Grant’s Farm. Near the tennis court is what looks like a gazebo but was actually Trudy and Beatrice’s playhouse, with a working fireplace. They would invite their parents for tea parties. Andy began working on the farm as a kid, mucking stalls and cutting trees. Later, he spent 15 years as the farm’s manager.
Andy says a majority of the siblings support the zoo because it’s in keeping with their father’s wishes. “What our father desired and what we wish is to keep the place intact and open to the public,” he says. “The zoo, we believe, is the perfect partner to do exactly that.” Yes, their father wanted the farm to stay in the family, too, but that would be achieved by retaining the private 22 acres for future generations to enjoy.
“I might add that we really do not believe that Billy can do this,” Trudy says. Operating Grant’s Farm is too costly for him to support with his little startup business. Sure, Billy has said he wouldn’t sell off pieces of Grant’s Farm to developers, but if his business fails and he runs out of money, he may have no choice. Even if Billy did keep the property intact, what would happen after he died? “There is no plan that Billy can legitimately do to say you’re going to pass this on,” Andy says.
For months, Billy has been promising to give his siblings a business plan, but one has not yet materialized. “We’ve heard a variety of excuses on that,” Andy says. “In reality, he really just does not have a business plan.” The zoo, on the other hand, has laid out its specific vision for the property. “We love it,” Andy says.
I ask about the point that Adolphus has made, on at least four occasions, that Billy’s plan would give the siblings revenue to offset costs at the Big House. “It’s never going to make that much money,” Trudy says. “It’s a way-overuse of Grant’s Farm.” She would like to set up an endowment for the property by donating back proceeds from the sale. (Adolphus says that won’t work, because there won’t be enough principal to generate enough interest to pay for the Big House’s astronomical expenses.) Andy says his brothers are simply trying to muddy the waters with distracting details. “That’s the same offer Billy made months ago that we looked at very closely, and so did Wells Fargo, the disinterested trustee, which was hired by Adolphus,” he says. “The zoo is by far the better way to go.”
I mention Adolphus’ accusations: Is Andy siding with the zoo to make money on the sale of his land? “When Adolphus came to me with that very point, I put my money where my mouth is, and I discounted that property in order to make this deal happen.” Is Trudy siding with the zoo because she doesn’t like Billy? “I do love Billy, but I disagree with some things with him,” she says. “On this Grant’s Farm issue, I totally disagree with Billy, and I think that has really been a thorn in the side to Adolphus.” They say that their brother Peter, whom Trudy calls the smartest businessman among them, looked at the details of the zoo’s proposal and immediately switched to their side.
Trudy doesn’t mention Billy’s daughter Scarlett, though according to Adolphus, she is the source of disagreement. When Billy announced his plans to buy Grant’s Farm, giving the importance of family as a reason, Scarlett took to Facebook. “It’s hard to believe that after the neglect and abandonment of his oldest daughter,” she wrote, “that his family legacy is truly that important to him or that he values family the way he claims… What kind of man after dismissing his oldest daughter uses family nobility and honor as a way to shine his rusty halo in the public eye?” Billy declined to comment on that, though a spokesman said that Billy had removed her from his life for “very solid reasons. It’s personal; it’s confidential.”
When I ask Trudy and Andy whether they worry that their lack of faith in Billy has hurt his feelings, they turn it around on him. “I think he is hurting our feelings too by not being supportive of us,” Trudy says.
Andy addresses his brother directly: “Billy, please join the majority. Please join what the disinterested trustee is saying is best for the place and what our father’s strong desires were.”
Would the best beer salesman who ever lived want to sell his farm to his son Billy, or to the Saint Louis Zoo? His children all claim the moral high ground, arguing that they’re doing what Gussie would have wanted. So what did Gussie really want? We can’t ask him, but we can ask his will. When he wrote that he would like to see “the family property continue to be retained, maintained, operated and developed, in trust or otherwise, as it has been in the past, as a single unit, to the extent and as long as it is reasonably practicable,” you might interpret that to mean that he wanted the farm to continue in perpetuity, a vote in favor of the zoo. But when he wrote of his “sincere and earnest hope that after the death of both my wife and me one or more of the children of my marriage to Gertrude Buholzer Busch will acquire all or portions of the family property and retain, maintain, operate, and develop it in accordance with my aforesaid desires,” that would seem to point toward keeping it in the family, a vote for Billy.
Since his death, the empire that Gussie built has been dismantled, piece by piece. The brewery sold the Cardinals. In-Bev swallowed the brewery. Busch Gardens and SeaWorld were cast off. Grant’s Farm is all that’s left. Soon, it too will be sold. The court will decide to whom, starting on March 28. That would have been Gussie’s 117th birthday. When the beer baron wrote in his will that “it is impossible for me to anticipate all of the circumstances which may arise in the future,” he couldn’t have been more right.
