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Dan Gilbert’s real estate portfolio Bedrock LLC has found a major tenant for its Cadillac Square development in downtown Detroit.
Cosm, a Los Angeles-headquartered entertainment company, will be bringing a live sports video dome and entertainment venue to Bedrock’s vacant 3.66-acre site that flanks the Rocket Companies Inc. headquarters and Campus Martius and Cadillac Square parks.
The 65,000-square-foot space will feature a 87-foot 12K+ LED dome and an adjacent high-resolution LED wall. The space will anchor a broader development at Cadillac Square, Bedrock CEO Kofi Bonner told Crain’s in an email, which includes a variety of housing, dining and retail options.
“This is not a concessionaire; this is not a theater; this is not an arena — it’s just Cosm,” Terry said.
Cosm has official partnerships with the NBA, UFC, TNT Sports, NBC Sports, ESPN, Fox Sports and the NFL to offer a slate of sports and entertainment programming.
There will be about 500 seats within the dome, with additional capacity for 1,500 people throughout the hall and standing room space. According to the company’s website, tickets for an NFL-streamed event at the Cosm Los Angeles location begin at $22 for general admission. Seating within the dome ranges from $50-$99.
Cosm is a “sportsbook, meets gastropub, meets lounge,” Terry said. It will feature food inspired by the locale but have a similar “scratch-made” menu to the other Cosm locations.
Around 200 employees typically work a Cosm event, though that number can fluctuate depending on the popularity of the programming.
The Friday announcement is a significant change to Bedrock’s plans for the development at Cadillac Square, previously called the Monroe Blocks. Officials broke ground on the project in December 2018, but work has halted since then and the site is still empty. City officials recently granted Bedrock an extension to start work on the project; that deadline is now May 1.
Cosm will be the first phase of the development at the site, which will also include Bedrock’s plans for a multi-level market food hall with sit-down and fast-casual dining options, according to a news release.
Detroit architecture firm Rossetti Inc. will design Cosm Detroit. The firm designed the $500 million Ford Field in downtown Detroit, which opened in 2002, and it handled the $100 million stadium upgrade in 2017. Rossetti was also tapped by Bedrock in 2018 for the redevelopment of the Brewster-Douglass housing projects site.
Bedrock is pivoting from its previous plans for a 2,000-seat concert and entertainment venue at the site, after news broke in April that the Music Hall Center for the Performing Arts was building a $122 million music venue just a few blocks away. In August, Gilbert deputies said they didn’t want to compete with the project.
Cosm Detroit will replace the previous plan for a concert venue that was to incorporate the National Theater façade on the Development at Cadillac Square site, Bonner confirmed. The façade was saved and preserved after the building was demolished. The company has dedicated significant resources to the meticulous deconstruction, restoration and storage of the façade.
“Bedrock remains committed to identifying the appropriate way to incorporate the façade and continues to experiment with plans that may complement the historic architecture of Detroit,” Bonner said.
Bedrock’s current vision for the entire site includes new buildings with 250-280 residential units, about 400,000 square feet of office space and 90,000 total square feet of retail, restaurant and market hall space, which could include a new downtown grocery store.
The site hosted the main stage of the 2024 NFL Draft earlier this spring. Previous activation efforts by Bedrock, including hosting the Monroe Street Midway, have ended.
Terry said Detroit’s response to the NFL Draft in April reinforced the company’s plans to open a Cosm location in the city. Detroit broke the NFL Draft attendance record handily, drawing 775,000 people over three days.
“As you look at it, the numbers jump off the page. It’s a top 20 city in the U.S.; the history of the city just screams that we need to put a Cosm there, and having an anchor in the Midwest was already always part of our rollout strategy,” Terry said.
Dan Gilbert’s Rock Ventures venture capital firm invested in Cosm’s most recent funding round of $250 million, which closed July 31.
The Cadillac Square development is one of four Gilbert-backed projects that received a $618.1 million transformational brownfield incentive in May 2018.
Bedrock is set to break ground on its 1.5 million-square-foot Development at Cadillac Square in 2025, which will be completed in a phased approach. Cosm Detroit is looking to open as early as 2026, Terry said.
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