The Grosse Pointe Shores estate of the late Ralph C. Wilson, founder and owner of the Buffalo Bills NFL team until his death in 2014, was sold to Detroit-area businessman Matt Cullen for $4.6 million, according to media reports.
An article published by the Detroit Free Press in 2020 described the property on Lakeshore Drive as “one of the Grosse Pointes’ most impressive estates. Wilson put together four-and-a-half acres on Lake St. Clair by buying three side-by-side lakeside estates as they came up separately for sale. This house is on the middle lot.”
Cullen currently serves as chairman of JACK Entertainment (formerly known as Rock Gaming), a Detroit-based urban gaming company that owns and operates gaming and racing properties in the Midwest. It was founded in 2009 by several businessmen, including Dan Gilbert, founder and chairman of Detroit-based Rocket Cos.
Cullen served as president of Rock Ventures from 2008 to 2020, and prior to that, he worked for General Motors in Detroit in various capacities between 1979 and 1998. He was the chief architect of GM’s acquisition and development of the Renaissance Center as the automaker’s global headquarters in May 1996.
While at GM, he helped to spark the formation of the Detroit Riverfront Conservancy, which has since led a billion-dollar transformation of the city’s international riverfront from a largely abandoned industrial site to a destination for entertainment and recreation.
Cullen continues to serve as the founding chairman of the Conservancy, whose goal is to create more than five miles of linked parks and greenways while ensuring perpetual public access to the Detroit Riverfront — from the Ambassador Bridge to the MacArthur Bridge at Belle Isle.
The Grosse Pointe Farms-based real estate agency Higbie Maxon describes the Wilson estate as being set on 4.3 acres of land along the Lake St. Clair shoreline. It is located adjacent to the Grosse Pointe Yacht Club and has about 445 feet of water frontage and features a 5,490-square-foot midcentury modern main house, a guest cottage, and a white clapboard farmhouse.
