City Planning Commission Greenlights First Step Toward Cosm Venue in Downtown Cleveland

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Bedrock Real Estate, Cosm and a project architect are already moving forward with plans to build a new immersive entertainment and hospitality venue in Downtown Cleveland known as Cosm Cleveland. And those conceptual plans crossed their first big hurdle today with unanimous support from the City Planning Commission.

More detailed plans will need to be reviewed and approved at a future Planning Commission meeting. But today, the goal was to get design review input from the commission, so no Cleveland-based renderings were presented. However, the basic design will be similar to other Cosm venues already built or under construction.

In a presentation given today, Bedrock and Rossetti Architects, both based in Detroit, said the new Cosm Cleveland could start construction as early as February 2026, although site preparation work could start much sooner. That includes construction of a 29,000-square-foot gravel pad foundation at the northeast corner of Huron Road and East 4th Street.

The commission also approved using a newly built parking lot at 611 Huron for construction worker parking and storage. The lot is where a condemned parking garage was demolished in late-2023 and would be part of a future development phase of the Rock Block.

After 15 months of construction, the new Cosm would will feature three primary programmatic elements: the dome, the hall, and the deck, complemented by internal food and beverage service, outdoor seating, and rooftop gathering spaces, plan show.

Cosm Cleveland will have an 87-foot diameter, 12K-resolution LED dome along with a complementary hi-resolution wall-to-wall LED display. Cosm venues typically offer up to 1,500 reserved seats plus as many as 500 general-admission, standing-room-only tickets.

At minimum, Cosm’s existing venues host three programs a day including movies, educational programs and live sporting events. On weekends, each location hosts up to seven programs in a single day. Each site offers food and beverage service, including at-seat service.

NEOtrans was first to report in June that Bedrock would begin site preparations with a 15-foot-deep pit for a probable entertainment venue that would be the first phase of its larger Rock Block mixed-use development.

Although earlier references to the proposed Cosm said the new facility would measure 50,000 square feet, today’s presentation said the sports and entertainment venue would total about 70,000 square feet among three floors. That’s comparable to existing Cosm venues in Los Angeles and Dallas, plus new ones under construction in Detroit and Atlanta.

Cleveland would be the fifth Cosm location thanks in part to Bedrock and Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert and Guardians minority owner David Blitzer investing $250 million into Cosm last year. Cleveland is due to get a Cosm before Chicago or any East Coast city. The company has plans to expand internationally as well.

Nora Romanoff, vice president of business development at Bedrock, said once Cosm Cleveland is opened in mid-2027, it is expected to employ about 300 full-time staff, contributing significantly to the local economy and downtown’s vitality. Bedrock acquired the site in 2023.

She called Cosm the “first chapter” to the 3-acre Rock Block site that sources say could also feature mid- to high-rise buildings towers offering residential, offices, hotel, retail and parking.

“A big focus for our team certainly is to install this first building but really to carefully consider site activation and the circulation of people to new and different places to reinforce those pedestrian paths to activate and to create these spaces I think that we see people want in a city,” Romanoff told the Planning Commission today.

One entrance to Cosm Cleveland will be at the corner of Huron and East 4th and the other will be at the opposite, northeast corner where pedestrian-only public spaces will be expanded from the existing walkway that was the East 6th Street alley.

Keeping those enhanced public spaces, which Cosm would like to utilize during events at nearby Rocket Arena and Progressive Field, is why the development team made the “difficult decision” to put Cosm’s loading dock on Huron, said William Smith, lead design associate at Rossetti Architects.

“What is important though is that when we look at this site from more of a macro perspective, we understand that Bedrock has other plans for the balance of the site, both property to the east as well as the property to the north,” Smith said.

“We have all agreed to develop a highly activated pedestrian space to the north (that) will serve all of the common facilities which are anticipated coming down the road,” he added.

“Let’s not be paralyzed by where it (the loading dock) is and be more creative about how it’s used and when it’s used, and what that residual impact is going to be when that door is closed versus open,” said Planning Commission Vice Chair August Fluker, who was standing in for Chair Lillian Kuri who was absent.

City planners also said that, following the creation this summer of one-way street pairs on Huron and Prospect to keep traffic moving and to open up bicycle-friendly lanes, they are also looking at creating designated locations for Uber/Lyft pick-up/drop-off points near Rocket Arena and the Rock Block.

The Haslam Sports Group came up short in landing a Cosm venue for its new stadium-area development in suburban Brook Park. But a source with the Haslams told NEOtrans they will pursue other retail and entertainment venues.

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