Cobo Hall / Huntington Place
Huntington Place, formerly known as Cobo Hall and Cobo Center, is Detroit's primary convention center and one of the largest such facilities in the United States. Located along the Detroit riverfront at 1 Washington Boulevard, it has served the city since 1960 as a venue for major trade shows, public events, and conventions. The building has operated under four names across its history, most recently becoming Huntington Place in December 2021 following a naming rights agreement with Huntington National Bank. Its story is bound up with the urban politics of mid-century Detroit, the long decline and partial recovery of the city's downtown, and ongoing debates about how public institutions reckon with complicated historical legacies.
History
The building's origins lie in a push, common among American cities in the postwar decades, to construct modern facilities capable of competing for large national conventions and trade shows. Detroit built and opened Cobo Hall in 1960, naming it after Albert E. Cobo, who served as mayor from 1950 to 1957.[1] Cobo had championed the project during his tenure, and the naming was intended as a civic honor. It didn't sit easily with everyone at the time. As mayor, Cobo actively opposed the integration of public housing and supported urban renewal programs that displaced tens of thousands of Black Detroit residents from neighborhoods cleared to make way for highways and development projects.[2] That history faded into the background for decades, kept alive mainly in academic and activist circles, before resurfacing sharply in the 2020s amid national debates over the naming of public spaces after figures whose records included explicit racial harm.
Long-time Detroit residents, for their part, kept calling it Cobo Hall regardless of what the sign said. That name had stuck in the city's vocabulary for sixty years, and no corporate rebrand has fully dislodged it.
In 2009, the State of Michigan established the Detroit Regional Convention Facility Authority (DRCFA) to take over ownership and operation of the facility, which the DRCFA leases from the City of Detroit under a 33-year agreement running through approximately 2042.[3] The DRCFA oversaw a substantial renovation program intended to modernize the aging building and restore its competitiveness in a convention market that had grown more demanding. The venue was formally rebranded as Cobo Center under the new management structure. A decade later, in 2019, it became TCF Center after a naming rights deal with TCF Bank, a regional financial institution headquartered in Michigan. When Huntington National Bank acquired TCF in 2021, a new naming rights agreement followed, and the facility became Huntington Place in December of that year.[4] The corporate lineage connecting TCF to Huntington explains why the transition happened so quickly; it wasn't a change of sponsor so much as a change of name on the same institution.
On July 31, 2024, Huntington Place launched a yearlong public celebration marking 65 years of the facility's history, with programming and exhibits documenting its evolution from a mid-century civic hall into one of the country's major convention destinations.[5]
Geography and Facilities
Huntington Place sits at 1 Washington Boulevard on the Detroit riverfront, directly on Jefferson Avenue, with its southern face oriented toward the Detroit River and, across it, Windsor, Ontario. The building's location puts it at the western edge of downtown, within walking distance of Campus Martius and Hart Plaza. Its coordinates are 42°19′34″N 83°2′49″W.
The facility's footprint is substantial. It ranks as the 16th largest convention center in the United States,[6] offering approximately 723,000 square feet of total space, including a main exhibition hall, a ballroom, meeting rooms, and an arena-style auditorium. The renovation work completed under the DRCFA's management updated the exhibit halls, improved the building's loading and logistics infrastructure, and modernized the interior public spaces. Plans for a JW Marriott hotel adjacent to the convention center have been discussed as a way to close one of the facility's longstanding competitive gaps: the absence of a directly connected full-service hotel, which event planners frequently cite as a factor when choosing between convention destinations.
A prominent feature at the venue's main entry is the Joe Louis Memorial, a large fist sculpture honoring Detroit's most celebrated heavyweight champion. The piece, installed near the Jefferson Avenue approach, has become one of the more photographed public art landmarks in downtown Detroit and is strongly associated in the public mind with both the venue and the city.
The surrounding area includes the Cobo Center Garage and several other parking structures, a cluster of major hotels, and the RiverWalk pedestrian path along the waterfront. Looking east along Jefferson from the venue, the former Scientology building on the waterfront is visible as a distinctive presence in the streetscape.
Culture and Notable Events
Huntington Place anchors a significant portion of Detroit's convention and event economy. It hosts trade shows, consumer expos, corporate meetings, concerts, and political gatherings throughout the year. Its largest and most storied regular tenant is the North American International Auto Show (NAIAS), commonly called the Detroit Auto Show, which has used the venue for decades and draws international press and industry figures each January — or, in more recent years, in September following scheduling adjustments made after the COVID-19 pandemic.[7] The Auto Show's presence at the venue has defined Huntington Place's identity as much as any other single event; for many visitors, the two are nearly synonymous.
The building's cultural significance is complicated by the legacy of its original namesake. Cobo's mayoral record included active resistance to integrated public housing and support for urban renewal clearances that disproportionately displaced Black Detroiters.[8] The rebranding as Huntington Place removed his name from the building, though the move was driven at least as much by a routine corporate naming-rights transaction as by any formal reckoning with that history. The current operators have emphasized diversity and inclusion as organizational values, and the venue's programming has reflected an effort to reach broader and more varied audiences.
Getting There
The venue is accessible by several transportation options. Drivers arriving from the north and east use I-375, which feeds directly into the downtown grid near the convention center, or I-75, which connects to Jefferson Avenue. From Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport in Romulus, the drive to Huntington Place is roughly 25 to 30 minutes depending on traffic.
The Detroit People Mover, an elevated automated rail loop, has a station — Cobo Center station, still carrying the older name — directly connected to the building, making it a convenient option for visitors staying in downtown hotels. The Detroit Department of Transportation (DDOT) and the regional Suburban Mobility Authority for Regional Transportation (SMART) operate bus routes serving Jefferson Avenue and the surrounding downtown streets. Ride-sharing services operate throughout the city and are commonly used for airport-to-venue trips.
For visitors arriving from Canada, the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel and the Ambassador Bridge both provide cross-border access within a short drive of the venue. A tunnel bus service connects downtown Detroit and Windsor, with stops near the convention center area, running approximately every two hours for a fare of $15 CAD each way. Parking is available in the Cobo Center Garage and several nearby surface and structure lots; availability tightens considerably during major events like the Auto Show. The RiverWalk and downtown street grid are navigable by foot or bicycle, and the venue's central location makes it one of the more walkable destinations in Detroit for visitors already staying downtown.
Economy
Huntington Place is one of the larger direct contributors to Detroit's hospitality and tourism economy. The events it hosts generate hotel stays, restaurant traffic, retail spending, and transportation revenue across the broader downtown and metropolitan area. The DRCFA, as the operating authority, manages the facility's budget and works to attract event bookings that will generate that downstream spending. Major conventions and trade shows with national or international draws — like the Auto Show — produce the most significant economic impacts, pulling in visitors who would not otherwise travel to Detroit.[9]
The facility directly employs hospitality, operations, and administrative staff, and indirectly supports jobs across the hotel, food service, and transportation sectors. Ongoing capital investment — in renovations, technology infrastructure, and the proposed hotel development — is aimed at keeping the venue competitive with peer facilities in cities like Chicago, Columbus, and Indianapolis, all of which have invested heavily in their convention infrastructure. Detroit's convention center capacity has historically been viewed as a constraint on the city's ability to attract certain large events, and the DRCFA's long-term mandate includes addressing that gap. The success of those efforts will depend in part on broader conditions: the recovery of downtown Detroit's hotel inventory, the quality of the visitor experience in the surrounding neighborhood, and the city's ability to market itself as a destination rather than simply a drive-in event site.