Armed with fresh renderings of the proposed new Cleveland convention center hotel, the design team for the project generally wowed an audience of planners, urban activists, downtown residents and real estate experts Wednesday night.

A majority of those who spoke at a free public forum on the design, held at the Cleveland Public Library's downtown branch, applauded the emerging hotel design but were also eager to suggest improvements. And the design team appeared eager to listen and respond.

“I’m a historic preservationist and I love this design; it’s very 2013,” said Nicholas Emenhiser during the Q & A period of a nearly two-hour meeting. About 75 people attended the event.

The Cleveland City Planning Commission is scheduled to hold a public meeting today at 9 a.m. on matters related to the financing of the hotel.

Architect Robert Neal of the Atlanta architecture firm of Cooper Carry kicked off the 5:30 p.m. gathering Wednesday at the library with roughly 60 slides describing the hotel's design.

The $260 million, 600-room facility, financed through bonds issued by Cuyahoga County, is to be built on the site of the now vacant county administration building, bounded by Lakeside Avenue, Ontario Street, Hamilton Avenue and the downtown Mall.

The 30-story hotel, conceived as a Hilton, will be connected underground to the new Cleveland convention center, located to the east and built underneath the Mall, and to the Global Center for Health Innovation, built directly to the south.

If it succeeds, the hotel could boost the liveliness of a gray zone of the city filled with impressive historic buildings, but generally devoid of life. It would also help boost bookings at the convention center and pump dollars into the city's economy.

Jeffrey Appelbaum, the Cleveland lawyer representing Cuyahoga County, which is developing the hotel, said that demolition of the old county building would begin in January, followed by excavation for the hotel foundation in February. Foundation work will begin in April.

Neal said he wanted his presentation to show how Cooper Carry listened closely to public comments at a meeting in August about design concepts for the hotel and has tried to respond.

The building will feature a 26-story slab filled with guest rooms that will be positioned atop a four-story, 90-foot base that will enclose ballrooms, a restaurant and the hotel lobby.

The base is intended to echo the neoclassical civic and government buildings in the Group Plan District, which flank the Mall. The district was laid out in 1903 by a team of architects led by Daniel Burnham of Chicago.

Yet Neal said that while Cooper Carry wanted to show sensitivity to the historic context of the Mall – in part by echoing the 90-foot cornice level of most buildings in the district – the firm also wanted the hotel tower to be glassy, crystalline and contemporary.

Some members of the audience Wednesday were disappointed that Cooper Carry had not included a restaurant and bar on the upper levels of the hotel.

Neal and Appelbaum said that elevators and stairwells required to serve a public restaurant would diminish the areas on floors below available for guest rooms. Instead, they’re considering a two-level, multi-purpose event space on the hotel’s 25th floor that could be leased for weddings and other gatherings to provide income.

“The whole goal of this is to draw major events to Cleveland to generate taxes,” Appelbaum said.

But he and Neal said they were open to suggestions that restaurateurs could lease the event space once a week or so to provide public access to the high-level views.

Cleveland architect Stephen Kordalski said he was skeptical about the Cooper Carry concept of putting a crease in the glassy façade of the hotel tower to echo the upward-sweeping fold in the Mall, which doubles as the convention center roof. The Mall sweeps upward as it approaches Lakeside Avenue to reveal a 27-foot-high entrance lobby.

“That’s not a very compelling space at the moment,” Kordalski said of the Mall, now a large expanse of unadorned grass. “If it changes you have a façade that relates to something that isn’t there any more, or relates to something that isn’t good enough to be worth relating to.”

Neal said it was reasonable to echo the fold in the Mall with the crease in the hotel facade because the Mall space is part of the urban context.

(He said after the meeting that he wished he had responded more forcefully by saying that the crease in the hotel façade is a dramatic gesture strong enough to stand on its own in the future regardless of the future of the Mall).

William Tarter of the Cleveland Young Professionals Senate congratulated the design team for its willingness to listen to public suggestions.

He also said he was impressed by the efforts of Cooper Carry to echo elements of the Group Plan District – including the 90-foot cornice line common to other buildings throughout the area.

He also asked the design team to consider giving the hotel an exterior elevator – one of the few ideas Neal said he disliked.

“It’s just not where we’re thinking the project needs to go,” he said.

But Neal said he agreed strongly with a suggestion from Hunter Morrison, director of the Northeast Ohio Sustainable Communities Consortium, that the south-facing façade of the hotel running east from Ontario Street should be more than a 90-foot blank wall.

That portion of the façade, which conceals interior stairwells and service areas, faces south toward a plaza on the west side of the Global Center for Health Innovation. Morrison said he thought the façade and the interior spaces behind it should be redesigned to animate the adjacent plaza.

“I think it’s an excellent point,” Neal said.

Neal said he also appreciated a suggestion from Tom Starinsky, associate director of the Historic Warehouse District, that the Lakeside Avenue drop-off zone at the hotel be designed as much for pedestrians as cars.

“People had good concerns and good suggestions,” Neal said after the meeting. “We’re going to go back and consider them.”

He said he hoped to return to Cleveland in January with an updated set of renderings showing how Cooper Carry has responded to what it’s heard so far.