With California and New York sporting nosebleed-level private earnings tax charges, dozens of billionaires have uprooted from their elite coastal enclaves in recent times and relocated to Palm Seaside, Florida. Palm Seaside has change into a real billionaire’s playground. The climate is heat year-round. There are a number of world-class golf programs. It has quietly developed into the middle of the American political universe, a not-insignificant issue for ultra-high-net-worth people. And for $70–100 million, and even north of $200 million, a billionaire can purchase a sprawling, multi-acre oceanfront property that might be unthinkable in most different components of the nation.
Simply final Thursday, we printed a narrative about an under-the-radar billionaire named David MacNeil who paid $75 million for a mansion in Manalapan, a city situated roughly a mile south of Palm Seaside. That buy got here on high of roughly $95 million price of actual property he already owned within the space. MacNeil additionally occurs to personal a $70 million Ferrari 250 GTO, certainly one of simply 36 ever constructed.
MacNeil’s story is notable as a result of, in an period when many fashionable billionaires have change into celebrity-adjacent figures due to flashy, high-tech ventures, he constructed his fortune in a much more boring manner. Most individuals have by no means heard his title, but there’s a good probability you will have certainly one of his merchandise in your automotive proper now. MacNeil is the founder and sole proprietor of WeatherTech, the Illinois-based firm that manufactures car ground mats. WeatherTech generated roughly $800 million in income in 2025, and MacNeil nonetheless owns 100% of the enterprise.
Right now, we’re telling the story of one other billionaire who was simply concerned in a large Palm Seaside actual property transaction. Like MacNeil, this billionaire didn’t make his fortune by constructing an app, launching a crypto token, or driving the AI increase. He made his cash within the easiest and most boring manner attainable. He inherited it.
The multi-billionaire who simply offered a Palm Seaside-area property for $97 million owes his $3.7 billion fortune to the truth that his great-grandfather single-handedly invented the fashionable chewing gum enterprise. You could have by no means heard of him, and also you definitely would not acknowledge him strolling down the road. However you’ll completely acknowledge his final title.
A Cleaning soap Salesman, A Gimmick, And An Unintended Empire
William’s great-grandfather, who was additionally named William, was born in 1861. Because the son of a modest cleaning soap maker, William dropped out of college on the age of 13 to work full-time promoting cleaning soap door-to-door.
To spice up gross sales, he got here up with a intelligent gross sales gimmick: Each bar of cleaning soap got here with a free pack of baking powder. Because it turned out, his clients had been rather more fascinated with his baking powder than his cleaning soap. So, he ditched the cleaning soap and made baking powder his major product.
As a brand new promotional gimmick, he included two free packs of chewing gum with each baking powder buy. Because it turned out, his clients had been rather more fascinated with his chewing gum.
In 1891, when he was 29, William based his personal firm that might completely give attention to promoting chewing gum. He named the corporate after himself: The William Wrigley Jr. Firm.
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Generational Billions From Sweet
Over the following a long time, the William Wrigley Jr. Firm grew to become a sweet empire. However apparently, the corporate was constructed not simply on gum however on obsessive promoting, distribution scale, and model repetition. By the early twentieth century, Wrigley was spending extra on promoting than some other firm in America, plastering his model on billboards, newspapers, magazines, and even mailing free gum to thousands and thousands of households.
Chewing gum turned out to be the right product: low cost to supply, simple to ship, habit-forming, and universally consumable. The cash caught round.
By the point William Wrigley Jr. died in 1932, he was price $40 million. After adjusting for inflation, that is the identical as $915 million at this time.
Following William’s loss of life, his son, Philip Ok. Wrigley, took over and oversaw its enlargement by way of the Nice Despair and World Warfare II, whereas additionally turning into the proprietor of the Chicago Cubs and steward of Wrigley Subject.
Philip Ok. Wrigley’s son, William Wrigley Jr. III, later assumed management of the household enterprise and performed a key position in modernizing the corporate throughout the postwar shopper increase. William Wrigley Jr. III is the daddy of William Wrigley Jr. II, at this time’s billionaire who simply offered a home in Palm Seaside for $97.5 million.
(Picture by Scott Olson/Getty Photographs)
$97 Million Palm Seaside Sale
After attending Duke College after which incomes an MBA from Wharton, William Wrigley Jr. II grew to become CEO of the household enterprise in 1999. Below his management, the corporate expanded past chewing gum by way of acquisitions of manufacturers similar to Altoids and Life Savers. He stepped down in 2008 after orchestrating the sale of the household enterprise to a equally family-owned enterprise, Mars Inc., for $23 billion.
With the sale, dozens of prolonged Wrigley members of the family grew to become liquid hundred-millionaires and billionaires. Right now, William Wrigley Jr. II’s web price is $3.7 billion.
In 2009, a yr after the Mars deal closed, William paid $11 million for a parcel of waterfront land inside a personal, gated golf neighborhood in Palm Seaside, Florida. A yr later, he added a neighboring parcel for $6.1 million. By 2013, he had accomplished building on an 18,000-square-foot waterfront mansion that includes a number of docks, together with one able to accommodating a big yacht, together with a swimming pool and an expansive garden overlooking the Intracoastal Waterway.
William simply offered this property for $97.5 million to a purchaser whose identification has not but been named.
This isn’t William’s first main actual property transaction. In 2022, he offered a mansion in Aspen, Colorado, for $30 million.
And to his credit score, each earlier than and after the $23 billion Mars sale, William didn’t merely sit again and acquire dividends. He performed a central position in pushing for and in the end securing the deal that ended greater than a century of household management.
After the sale, at a degree when he may have comfortably performed nothing for the remainder of his life, he selected to tackle a brand new problem. In 2018, William grew to become the chief government officer of the hashish firm Parallel, a task he continues to carry at this time.
