Detroit: Huntington Place#
Opened: 1960 (as Cobo Hall). Renovated: 2015 ($279M). Exhibit space: 723,000 sq ft. Walk Score: 91. Transit Score: 84.
One of the largest convention centers in North America, built on one of the most documented cases of convention center displacement of Black communities. Three names in five years. The building that ate Paradise Valley.
What Was Here Before#
Black Bottom and Paradise Valley — Detroit’s Black residential and commercial districts, destroyed through urban renewal in the 1950s and 1960s.
- Black Bottom: Residential neighborhood. Estimated 10,000+ families displaced across multiple clearance phases, roughly 100,000 residents affected.
- Paradise Valley: Detroit’s Black commercial and entertainment district. Jazz clubs that hosted Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald. The center of Black business life in Detroit.
The land was cleared for a combination of I-375, Lafayette Park (Mies van der Rohe’s modernist housing), and Cobo Hall. The convention center was one piece of a larger program that erased an entire community to build infrastructure that served a different population.
This is not ancient history. People who grew up in Black Bottom are still alive. The neighborhood’s destruction is one of the most studied cases in American urban planning — see Thomas Sugrue’s The Origins of the Urban Crisis (1996).
Compare with Nashville (Black Bottom there too — different city, same name, same pattern) and Washington DC (convention center built after urban renewal cleared the old downtown).
The Name Changes#
| Year | Name | Why |
|---|---|---|
| 1960 | Cobo Hall | Named for Mayor Albert Cobo (1950–1957) — who ran on an anti-integration platform and accelerated the urban renewal that displaced Black residents. The naming was always contested. |
| 2019 | TCF Center | Naming rights deal with TCF Financial Corporation |
| 2021 | Huntington Place | Huntington Bancshares acquired TCF Financial; naming rights transferred |
Three names in five years. The Cobo name was controversial for decades — naming a building built on a destroyed Black neighborhood after the mayor who accelerated the destruction. The corporate rebrandings resolved the politics by replacing the name with whoever held the checkbook.
The Renovation#
$279 million renovation completed 2015, designed by SmithGroup (Detroit-based):
- New glass curtain wall along the Detroit River
- New ballroom and meeting spaces
- Modernized exhibit halls
- Phased construction 2010–2015
Funded through regional hotel tax revenue bonds — the same funding mechanism that required the state governance takeover (see below).
Surroundings#
| Direction | What’s There |
|---|---|
| South | Detroit River and Riverwalk (award-winning public space) |
| West | Corktown — Detroit’s oldest neighborhood, now a tech/startup hub since Ford’s Michigan Central investment |
| East/North | Downtown core, Spirit of Detroit plaza, GM Renaissance Center (~1 mile east) |
The building sits between downtown and the river, forming a partial barrier between the city grid and the waterfront — a common convention center placement pattern. The Riverwalk works around it rather than through it.
Governance & Finance#
| Owner/Operator | Detroit Regional Convention Facility Authority (DRCFA) |
| Created by | Michigan PA 554 of 2008, operational 2009 |
| Board | Regional — appointed by Governor, Wayne County, City of Detroit, and surrounding counties |
| Funding | Wayne County 6% convention facility tax on hotels + Michigan 5% state accommodations tax |
The State Takeover#
The DRCFA was created by state legislation in 2009, replacing sole City of Detroit control. This happened four years before Detroit’s 2013 bankruptcy filing — the convention center’s fiscal distress was an early signal.
The governance shift was politically contentious: the state removed a major asset from city control and replaced it with a regional authority. But it was also a prerequisite for the $279M renovation funding. The pattern — state intervention justified by deferred maintenance, enabling a construction project funded by regional taxes — is worth noting for other cities.
Pre-COVID annual revenue was approximately $30–35M. Post-renovation booking pipeline has been strong, but the building still depends on hotel tax subsidy for operations.
The Real Innovation Story Is Elsewhere#
Huntington Place hosts the North American International Auto Show and other major conventions. But Detroit’s actual economic reinvention is happening in different buildings:
- Michigan Central (2.5 miles west in Corktown) — Ford’s $950M campus with Newlab operating the innovation hub
- UM Center for Innovation (~1 mile north in District Detroit) — $250M university campus for robotics and advanced manufacturing, opening 2027
The convention center markets Detroit’s innovation story to convention planners. The actual innovation happens at Michigan Central and the UM center — buildings designed for daily use, not episodic events.
Sources#
- Huntington Place
- Detroit Regional Convention Facility Authority
- Detroit Historical Society — Black Bottom
- Thomas Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton, 1996)
- Walk Score: 1 Washington Blvd
- Michigan Legislature, PA 554 of 2008
Page created 2026-04-01.