CLEVELAND, Ohio - The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum revved up designs for improvements to its outdoor plaza, winning approval from the city's Design Review Committee two weeks after the panel initially tabled the proposal.

"We are thrilled," Greg Harris, Rock Hall president and CEO, said after the meeting. "With this approval, we will begin to bring this place to life."

The Rock Hall plans to install the now-revised improvements this summer, and to begin live outdoor performances as early as June, in time for the Republican National Convention in July.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum supplied a photo showing its plaza full of people. It's current design proposals are intended to support such activity. Courtesy Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum

The intention is to liven up a bleak, often lifeless swath of concrete designed by architect I.M. Pei as the forecourt to his Rock Hall, which opened in 1995 off Erieside Avenue in downtown Cleveland, overlooking North Coast Harbor and Lake Erie.

Plans call for the installation of an outdoor stage to accommodate concerts by local bands five days a week, plus an outdoor cafe and a large sign in red metal spelling out "Long Live Rock."

The project is part of the $3 million-$4.5 million first phase of what the Rock Hall calls "Museum 2.0," a redesign that will eventually encompass revisions of its Hall of Fame and main exhibit areas.

The Rock Hall engaged BRC Imagination Arts of Burbank, California, and the Cleveland architecture firm of Westlake Reed Leskosky to design the improvements.

The Design Review Committee, which advises the city's Planning Commission, the body whose approval is required for building permits, tabled the original proposal at its March 3 meeting.

Architect Jack Bialosky, the chairman of the 10-member committee, said the initial designs were underwhelming, static and derivative.

Architects from Westlake Reed Leskosky, the leading national firm based in Cleveland, tweaked the design for sail-shaped canopies that would cover an outdoor cafe at the northwest corner of the Rock Hall plaza.

Instead of serving food from shipping-container kitchens, the Rock Hall now plans to have at least one food truck on the plaza dishing up food and refreshments.

The designers also refined plans for the "Long Live Rock" sign, in part by filling the "O" in "Long" with images of rock performers that could be swapped out depending on whose name is in the news.

As an example, the latest rendering of the sign showed an image in the "O" of the late David Bowie in his Ziggy Stardust persona.

Paul Westlake, a principal of the Westlake firm, said the base of the 6-foot-high sign has been raised to 15 inches, creating a seating wall at the base.

"We hope it's co-opted and almost misappropriated by the public," he said. "We'd be happy if they put stickers on it in and interacted with it."

When questioned about the bold, blocky font chosen for the letters in the sign, Harris said the Rock Hall wanted to avoid picking a design that would be too closely associated with one band or one genre of rock.

"You could picture a Metallica fan wanting lighting-bolt letters," he said, "And that's one fan. Another fan wants fuzzy dice. When you start introducing those elements, it is not inclusive. We wanted something that was strong but could speak to many different genres, many different languages, while still having strength and attitude."

Members of the committee questioned Harris about whether the circular concrete planters installed along Erieside Avenue as a defensive perimeter could be removed in the future.

Harris said the planters were purchased with a grant from the Federal Emergency Management Administration under a Homeland Security program meant to protect public facilities.

He said he'd like to explore in the future whether the planters, now filled with plastic plants, could be removed and replaced with something simpler and more attractive.

For now, the plaza designers propose painting the planters black and covering them with black metal lids emblazoned with the names of famous rock performers.

Bialosky pointed out that the black-painted lids could be unpleasantly hot in the summer, making it impossible to sit on them. The designers and Rock Hall officials agreed to keep working on that aspect of the project.

The committee chairman said he was pleased overall by the improvements in the design, although he said he felt the "Long Live Rock" sign was too imitative of a similar type of sign outside the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

"If you feel really, really strongly about that, I would defer to that, but I personally would prefer something that is very clearly Cleveland, and I don't think this is."

Nevertheless, he and the other committee members voted unanimously, 10-0, to approve the project. The plans next go to the city Planning Commission Friday.

Harris said after the meeting that the improvements would "create a communal space on the lakefront activated with programs and activities to make it a living, breathing lakefront.

"You will hear live music and have great smells and see people from all over the country," he said. "It will set the stage for entering a museum of rock 'n' roll in a way that the current windswept plaza does not."