Boozing with Shamu

Mission Beach — With St. Louis brewing giant Anheuser-Busch battling a hostile $46.4 billion takeover attempt by Belgium’s InBev, locals are bracing for the possibility that SeaWorld, the long-controversial aquatic park on City-owned land along the shores of Mission Bay, may be about to change hands once again. Anheuser-Busch bought the sprawling theme park back in 1990 from book-publishing company Harcourt Brace and quickly began morphing it into a small-time version of Disneyland. The brewer spent millions on lobbyists and political consultants in its ultimately successful 1998 effort to persuade local voters to let the company override the City’s 30-foot coastal height limit and build an array of amusement park rides, including the garish Journey to Atlantis. Now under siege by the Europeans, however, the firm most famous for Bud is said to be thinking of unloading SeaWorld, along with its sister park in Orlando, Florida, and eight other theme parks it owns. One possible buyer: the government of Dubai, the small but very rich neighbor of Saudi Arabia on the Persian Gulf. Which raises the question: would the alcohol-eschewing Muslim nation tear out the beer garden that Anheuser-Busch lobbied so hard to install on the premises?