The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame’s $135 million expansion — the museum’s largest construction project since its 1991 groundbreaking — will open to the public on Sunday, Nov. 22, Cleveland Scene reported. The triangular, grass-topped extension sits west of the original I.M. Pei pyramid on Cleveland’s lakefront and is designed as the Rock Hall’s more public-facing community space, mostly free to enter, according to Cleveland Scene.
Visitors will pass a lakeside garden to reach a new entrance and a panoramic view of Lake Erie, with an entire floor of giant steps built for stopping and taking in the coastline, Cleveland Scene reported. “It’s a wow statement,” Rock Hall CEO Greg Harris told Cleveland Scene on a recent tour. “You come in, see the lake and feel that music is playing. This place is alive,” Harris told Cleveland Scene.
Cleveland Magazine, which also toured the project, reported that the expansion adds 50,000 square feet — growing the museum by about 40 percent — and includes the Haslam Atrium entryway, named after a $10 million donation from Browns owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam, and the Taylor Family Community Park outside. Exhibition space almost doubles, and areas for cafés and food pop-ups grow with it, Cleveland Scene reported.
The centerpiece for live music is Baker Hall, the two-floor, cone-shaped events space and concert venue. Cleveland Scene reported the hall can hold up to 850 people — almost three times the previous capacity — with new attention to acoustics and sound design. “We want any artist that plays this to think this is the greatest room they’ve ever played in,” Harris told Cleveland Scene.
The expansion has been a long build. Harris and a panel of city and county leaders laid out the Rock Hall’s aspirations in October 2023, a little more than three years before the opening, Cleveland Scene reported, and Cleveland Magazine reported that crews broke ground that same month in 2023. A public building in the fullest sense, 95 percent of the cash raised for the groundbreaking came from local donors, according to Cleveland Scene.
The design is meant to hold its own next to a landmark. Harris told Cleveland Scene the extension complements Pei’s design without being entirely subservient to it, and that an addition that looked just like Pei’s pyramid would have been boring. Project manager Tim Offermant called it a “breathtaking entrance worthy of rock and roll” when the plans were spelled out in 2023, according to Cleveland Scene.
The opening lands in the middle of a lakefront in transition. The Browns are bound for Brook Park, the Port of Cleveland has begun a nine-figure renovation, and the North Coast Waterfront Development Corporation has released another batch of plans tied to tearing down Ohio Route 2 and building a new land bridge, Cleveland Scene reported. Against that backdrop, Scene reported, the Rock Hall is carrying the brightest torch for lakefront expansion — and it purchased Harbor Verandas nearby in July.
For Cleveland, the stakes are practical as well as symbolic. The Rock Hall has anchored North Coast Harbor since it opened in 1995, and a mostly free community floor changes who the building is for: school groups, neighborhood events and visitors who may never buy a full museum ticket can still walk in, sit on the steps and look out at the lake. Related coverage: Ohio’s other big museum project, the Ohio History Center’s $58 million rehab, and Bridgestone’s new training center investment on its Akron campus.
What we know — and what we’re still waiting on
What is confirmed is the date and the shape of the building: a Nov. 22 public opening, a $135 million final price tag, a new lake-facing entrance and a much larger events hall, as reported by Cleveland Scene and Cleveland Magazine. Still to come from the Rock Hall are the opening-day program, the first Baker Hall concert bookings, and how ticketing and free access will work floor by floor once the doors open.
What happens next is the opening itself on Nov. 22. Clevelanders who watched the extension rise west of the pyramid for three years will get their first walk through the atrium, the garden and the giant steps — and the lakefront gets its newest public room just as the holiday season begins.
Photo: Erik Drost, CC BY