Officials break ground today for the new Cosm immersive, dome-shaped theater in Downtown Cleveland’s Gateway District. At left is Huron Road and Rocket Arena. The construction site was a surface parking lot that has been considered for mixed-use development for more than a decade (Rock Entertainment). CLICK IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM.
Cosm, largest screen due to open summer 2027
Cosm, an immersive technology and entertainment venue, officially saw construction start today with a formal groundbreaking ceremony attended by city, county and state officials plus CEOs of major locally based employers like Sherwin-Williams, Cleveland Clinic and Cleveland Cliffs.
But construction legally got underway March 30 when the city approved a building permit for the foundation of the 70,229-square-foot Cosm “shared reality” theater complex at 507 Huron Rd. in Downtown Cleveland’s Gateway District. Construction work led by general contractor Whiting-Turner of Baltimore is due to take 14 months.
Site preparation for Bedrock Real Estate’s 3.2-acre “Rock Block” mixed-use development has actually been occurring for much longer. NEOtrans was first to report on the site prep work last summer and noted rumors that a “fusion sports-entertainment venue” like Cosm might be part of it.
Rock Ventures owner Dan Gilbert, Cleveland Guardians’ minority owner David Blitzer and Avenue Sports Fund invested $250 million into Cosm in 2024, giving them a strong voice into where future Cosm facilities would be built. Bedrock is a Rock Ventures company.
The Cleveland location is one of Cosm’s first in the nation and will have the largest high-resolution LED dome-shaped screen among the first five theaters. That dome will measure nearly 100 feet across. Under construction are sites in Atlanta and Detroit. Already open are Cosm theaters in Dallas and Los Angeles.
The Gateway District site of where Cosm is being constructed and what the first floor of the new theater will look like (Rossetti).
“We’re working to unlock nearly $5 billion in private- and public-sector capital to transform not just our waterfronts, but the urban core of Cleveland,” said Mayor Justin Bibb at today’s ceremony. “This investment speaks to that momentum and that sense of urgency that I admire and love from Bedrock and their support of our great city.”
Construction cost of Cleveland’s Cosm venue hasn’t been publicly revealed yet. But the permit for the foundation had a $4.4 million estimate. A second permit application was submitted last week, still pending, for the theater’s $12.9 million core and shell.
Additional permits for electrical, plumbing, technology and furnishings have yet to be submitted and will add millions more to the total construction investment, likely pushing Cosm’s total cost well above $20 million.
“We’ve seen a lot of plans for this area but most of all it’s been a parking lot,” said City Council President Blaine Griffin. “We want to get rid of parking lots in the city’s downtown core district. We want to have projects like this.”
The site was where a mixed-use megaproject called nuCLEus was first proposed in 2014 by Cleveland-based Stark Enterprises. It walked away from the project and sold the land to Bedrock in 2023 for $26.5 million.
Rendering of the new Cosm immersive sports-entertainment theater, as viewed from Rocket Arena on Huron Road and East 4th Street (Rossetti).
And while Bedrock hasn’t said what upcoming phases of development at the Rock Block might yield, they are likely to include a mix of residential, retail and other uses to build off of the “experiential” sports-entertainment offerings of the Gateway District.
“When they started the Gateway District back in the early 90s, it was a bunch of parking lots and they kind of forgot to address this parking lot,” said Nic Barlage, CEO of Rock Entertainment Group, a Rock Venture company, pointing to the muddy pit where Cosm is being built.
“And so today, we get the chance to address this parking lot,” Barlage added. “And I would agree with what Blaine (Griffin) said, from the standpoint of we want to get rid of parking lots and we want to go vertical. We want to create aspects and venues and assets that create impact for a long, long time.”
With up to four educational, movie, sports and entertainment programs per day, the Cleveland Cosm venue is expected to approximately 750,000 visitors to downtown Cleveland annually. That will nearly offset the annual loss from Huntington Bank Field and the Cleveland Browns moving to Brook Park in 2029.
“This is our fifth venue, so one for the thumb for those who count championship rings,” said Jeb Terry, president and CEO of Cosm. “I gotta tell you, walking around this downtown district, you just feel the energy of what’s happening here in the city, in the downtown, in an around these arenas. You see the investment taking place.”
A drone view of the Cosm construction site where preparations for the new immersive, shared-reality theater have been ongoing since last fall, including the removal of more than 200 years of building foundations, basements, sewers and other subterranean structures, some of which were not included on any historical documents (Rock Entertainment).
“And that’s why we as Cosm, it was an easy ‘yes’ we’re going to come to The Land,” Terry said. He and Cosm board Chairman Stephen Winn said the venue will offer educational programming for children, movies for people of all ages and sporting events from around the world.
“Cleveland gets passed over for a lot of different things, especially when it’s new up-and-coming ideas that are needle movers,” said Dan Whalen, managing director at Bedrock, in a post-groundbreaking interview provided by Rock Entertainment on YouTube.
“So to get one of the first five in the country, on the globe, and see what the pipeline is going to look for Cosm here on out, I think we really need to celebrate that and cherish it and use it as a launch pad for what we do next,” Whalen continued.
“Dan (Gilbert) may not be here today but he is watching,” Barlage noted. “And I will tell you that, as with anything with Dan, there is a relentless approach to creating outcomes for both Cleveland and Detroit that will live on for decades to come.”
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