One of Detroit’s biggest churches is selling the historic Rogell Golf Course to a cemetery company that plans to turn the site into a burial ground — drawing the ire of some neighbors, according to Nirak Warikoo in the Detroit Free Press.
Greater Grace Temple, which purchased the 120-acre, 18-hole golf course from the City of Detroit for $2 million in 2004, is selling the property to Detroit Memorial Park. It will shut down May 31.
“It’s never been profitable,” Bishop Charles Ellis III told the Free Press on Thursday.
The church had to spend up to $100,000 a year to keep afloat a golf course whose admission fees were relatively inexpensive compared with other facilities.
Billy Rogell, the course's namesake, played shortstop for the Tigers and served for many years on the Detroit City Council.
