By james art Dan Gilbert plans to bring an immersive viewing experience for ultra-high definition television for sports and events to Detroit.
Cosm, a Los Angeles-based company, announced Friday that it plans to open its next “experiential entertainment venue” in downtown Detroit. The site will be part of the Monroe Blocks development next to Campus Martius, a development that Gilbert’s real estate firm Bedrock has been planning for years.
The Cosm venue will feature high-definition LED screens and a 12K resolution LED dome for viewing live sporting events, as well as Cirque du Soleil and immersive art exhibitions. Cosm says it has partnerships with the NBA, NFL, UFC, NBC Sports, TNT Sports and FOX Sports.
The Detroit location will be the company’s fourth, following Los Angeles, Dallas and a future location in Atlanta. A recent Los Angeles Times story described how the LA Cosm, which seats 1,500 to 2,000, had plush seating, a wraparound screen and was selling hundreds of dollars worth of tickets for Game 3 of the World Series.
Cosm will apparently replace an earlier plan by Bedrock to build a 1,500 to 2,000-seat concert hall at the Monroe Blocks complex in partnership with a UK-based company known as tvg Hospitality.
In August, a Bedrock representative said they were abandoning the previous concert venue concept because they did not want to compete with the future 2,000-seat venue that is part of the $125 million Music Hall expansion project.
Cosm’s announcement said details on the opening schedule for the Detroit location and event schedule will be released at a later date. A representative for Cosm declined to comment on the planned size of the venue. The architect of the hall will be Rossetti from Detroit.
“I can’t think of a better location than Detroit for our fourth location,” Jeb Terry, president and CEO of Cosm, said in a news release.
“Detroit embodies the right mix of sports fans, entrepreneurial spirit and energy; and we are honored to be a part of the downtown revitalization that Dan Gilbert and his team are leading,” the release said. “Cosm Detroit will be the ever-active pulse of downtown, offering unparalleled sports and entertainment experiences for Detroit residents to share together. “
Cosm will be built near the former Monroe Street Midway and the old National Theater building, 118 Monroe St., which contractors demolished in January to make way for the NFL Draft stage.
The Downtown Development Authority has given Bedrock until next May to begin construction on the first phase of the three-phase Monroe Blocks project, which will include the COSM site. The second phase, which includes 250 to 280 apartments, retail shops and a possible grocery store, is set to break ground in October 2026. The third phase, an office tower and more retail shops, is set to break ground in January 2028 .
Bedrock reduced the Monroe blocks, also known as The Development at Cadillac Square, after the project broke ground in December 2018. Initial plans called for more than 800,000 square feet of office space, more than 480 apartments, nearly 170,000 square feet of retail space and a date of completion in 2022
Monroe Blocks is one of four downtown Bedrock projects approved for the Transformational Brownfield Development Incentive, worth a total of up to $618 million.
Bloomberg News reported in July that Gilbert was among a group of billionaires who raised $250 million for Cosm. The funding pushed Cosm to a $1 billion valuation, the report said, and the company has plans to open 50 locations by the end of the decade.
(This story has been updated to add new information.)
Contact JC Reindl: 313-378-5460 or [email protected]. Follow him on X @jcreindl