If it were a car, it would be chunky and squarish with rounded corners, like an early . If it were a kitchen appliance, it would be a sleek new microwave ready to heat things up.
In other words, the new Cosm Cleveland, an immersive entertainment facility under construction in Downtown Cleveland, will resemble popular consumer items with an appealing, boxy shape and ready-to-rock vibe.
Construction is already underway on the project, but a ceremonial groundbreaking on April 16 drew fresh attention to the four-story, 70,000-square-foot theater.
Scheduled for completion in late summer 2027 on the site of a former parking lot at Huron Road and East 4th Street in Downtown Cleveland, Cosm is a project involving its namesake company and Bedrock, the Detroit-based real estate company headed by billionaire Dan Gilbert, owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers.
With a vast, wraparound LED screen and stadium-style seating, Cosm will accommodate 1,000 visitors at a time for up to four events a day, including movies, sports and arts and entertainment, such as performances by Cirque du Soleil.
It represents a big bet on big screens at a time when traditional movie theaters are struggling.
The theory is that spectacular, you-are-there visual experiences, plus food and drink service at one鈥檚 seat, will create robust attendance for in-person entertainment Cosm describes as 鈥�.鈥欌赌�
The Cleveland Cosm will be the fifth in a group that includes venues in Los Angeles and Dallas. Two more Cosms are set to open this summer and fall in Atlanta and Detroit, respectively.
A check of Cosm鈥檚 website shows that admission prices 鈥� not including parking, food and beverages 鈥� vary depending on the event and venue. In Dallas, for example, between the Philadelphia 76ers and Boston Celtics in the first round of the NBA playoffs range from $11 to $28.
The name Cosm unites 鈥渃osmos鈥� with 鈥淐olosseum,鈥欌�� a verbal combo that evokes the roots of the privately held company in its ownership of 700 planetariums and domed theaters around the world, and the mass appeal of ancient Roman spectacles, minus the blood and sand.
鈥淚t's about the connectivity,鈥欌�� Cosm CEO Jeb Terry, a former guard for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and San Francisco 49ers, said in an interview at the groundbreaking. 鈥淚t's the human connection that we focus on.鈥�
Reconciling opposites through design
Renderings of the Cleveland Cosm, designed by the Detroit architecture firm Rossetti, show that the project will try to communicate the exhilarating nature of the big-screen offerings it will contain. That鈥檚 a tall order because it requires making a big, boxy container feel like a spaceship zooming through a wormhole in space.
Cosm鈥檚 design faintly recalls the popular Streamline Moderne style of the 1930s, but it looks closer in spirit to the curving metal contours of certain contemporary auto bodies or kitchen appliances.
Designed for easy recognition from the windshield of a car, it will bring a type of bold, high-speed visual branding common along highways and commercial strips into Downtown Cleveland.
And yet, despite its curves, the building probably won鈥檛 look very sculptural. Its tight layers of exterior panels will be too flat for that. Renderings suggest the building will try to compensate for its essential thin-ness of by peeling various layers of its skin to reveal a glassy, multi-story lobby and fa莽ade panels in contrasting shades.
Overall, the building is another sign of the general flattening of contemporary architecture often in service of affordability and relative simplicity of construction.
In defense of the everyday
This is not to say the building will be a dud. It鈥檚 an example of the everyday vernacular of highway strip architecture first championed in 1972 by architects Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown in their landmark book 鈥淟earning from Las Vegas.鈥欌赌� Not everything needs to be high-class modernism, or, as President Trump advocates, neoclassical design.
And yet, it's disappointing, given its mission of branding and easy recognizability, that the building won鈥檛 have a livelier color scheme than beige and gray. The palette won鈥檛 add much zip to the scenery in Cleveland鈥檚 gray winters.
But Nic Barlage, CEO of Rock Entertainment Group in Cleveland, said that when lighted at night, the building 鈥渨ill glow like a spaceship. It will look like something very, very, very unique.鈥欌赌�
The Cosm design would be intrusive in historically sensitive parts of downtown such as Playhouse Square or the Warehouse District, but it should make sense in the Gateway District on the south side of downtown, home to Progressive Field and Rocket Arena, where the Cavaliers play.
That鈥檚 especially true because a 2019 expansion enclosed the north side of Rocket Arena with a vast fa莽ade of reflective glass that looks opaque and visually dull, especially on cloudy days. It鈥檚 a different story at night when the lobby lights up and fans pack the place.
A part of something bigger
Cosm could add visual vitality and regular jolts of life on the north side of Huron Road at Gateway during the day, which the area very much needs. Plus, it will occupy a parking lot where Cleveland-based Stark Enterprises once planned the large-scale .
Bedrock, which acquired the 3-acre site from Stark in 2023, has big visions for the rest of the property, bordered to the north by hotels and arcades on Prospect Avenue, and the East 4th Street restaurant and housing corridor. But company representatives declined to provide details about the future of what they call the 鈥淩ock Block.鈥欌赌�
The Franco-Swiss modern architect Le Corbusier famously said that a house is a 鈥渕achine for living.鈥欌赌� Cosm will be a machine for fun 鈥� and profit. If it succeeds, it will attract hundreds of thousands of visitors per year, potentially bringing attendance close to that of established attractions such as the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Cleveland Museum of Art.
That sounds like a plus for the city, but if it merely Hoovers dollars from visitors who zip in and out without spending money elsewhere, it won鈥檛 help the company鈥檚 larger mission of boosting downtown鈥檚 economy and street-level vitality.
Barlage said, in essence, that economic extraction is not the goal.
The Cosm theater is part of a 鈥渧ery deliberate鈥欌�� plan to create a 鈥渇oundation of activity,鈥欌�� he said. 鈥淥n top of that foundation of activity, that's when the retail wave comes. We can't create the retail wave [now] and then expect the other things just to follow.鈥欌赌�
In addition to anchoring future development on the Rock Block, Cosm is the latest step in Gilbert鈥檚 emerging project to turn Cleveland into an encore of his widely praised revitalization of Downtown Detroit, which started around 2010, and is helping locally-owned retailers and businesses.
In Cleveland, Gilbert and Bedrock are building a critical mass around a proposed $3.5 billion expansion and renovation of the 1930s vintage Tower City complex along the Cuyahoga River at Collision Bend.
The first big component of that effort, the Cleveland Clinic Global Peak Performance Center, including the Cavaliers鈥� training facility, is scheduled for completion next year. The company announced plans for along the river, and it鈥檚 building a new park with an just north of Rock Arena, and west of the Cosm site.
For now, it鈥檚 possible on a walk through the area to see the connections emerging between all the Bedrock projects on the southwest edge of downtown at Gateway and Tower City.
Even so, the wide expanses of pavement at the Huron-Ontario intersection at the heart of the district still make it one of the least pedestrian-friendly areas in the city. Fixing that will be a big challenge for Gilbert and the City of Cleveland. The park with the basketball court at the northeast corner of the intersection is a good first step in that direction.
Risks ahead
Cosm Cleveland has the potential to be an important building block in Bedrock鈥檚 plans, but it comes with two kinds of risk.
One is that its architecture could soon look dated. Will it still be appealing in 10 or 20 years? Will it be worthy of preservation in 50, or will it seem disposable?
Perhaps more to the point, at a time when tech is changing so fast, it鈥檚 an open question whether the entertainment preferences embodied by Cosm could soon be superseded by the next big thing.
The April 16 groundbreaking was awash in praise for the 鈥渆xperiential economy,鈥欌�� which sounded counterintuitive given that Cosm won鈥檛 present actual live events.
Cosm Chair Stephen Winn went so far as to say that the theater would be an answer for young people who, he said, are turned off by traditional museums.
鈥淢ost important to me is the youth of our cities, in my opinion, have in some ways lost the spark of imagination that they got in museums and planetariums over the years,鈥欌�� he said, suggesting that longstanding institutions have lost their power to captivate and inspire.
That assertion felt off-key in a city with boundless and well-justified pride for world-class institutions such as the Rock Hall, art museum and Cleveland Orchestra, all of which, by the way, are and . Winn鈥檚 remark had a touch of hubris, like actor Timoth茅e Chalamet鈥檚 claiming that opera and ballet are dying art forms.
No one could argue with Bedrock鈥檚 goal of revitalizing Downtown Cleveland. And it appears that Cosm is calculated to leverage even greater things to come.
If the project helps to create a more seamless, thriving downtown, with plenty of street life and vibrant, locally-owned businesses, more power to it. But Cosm will need to live up to its hype. Its staying power as a long-term contribution to the culture and business of the city needs to be proven.
