CLEVELAND, Ohio — Cleveland's downtown Amtrak station is so ugly that Cuyahoga County wants to hide it from visitors to its grand new convention center.

"The Amtrak station is an unsightly obstruction," said Jeff Appelbaum, the county's point man for the $465 million medical mart and convention center under construction on the downtown bluff overlooking the tracks.

The squat brown, 36-year-old building sits center stage in the vista from the convention center's floor-to-ceiling ballroom windows. So the county has hired a landscape architect to make suggestions -- possibly blocking the station -- before the convention center opens next July.

Appelbaum also wants to replace the tall trees north of the station with something smaller, to open up the view to Browns Stadium, the Great Lakes Science Center and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame beyond.

"We hope to find a solution and figure out how to fund it," he said.

The city of Cleveland owns the land beneath the station and the free parking lot between the Shoreway and the Norfolk Southern Railway tracks. Andrea Taylor, a spokeswoman for Mayor Frank Jackson, said Tuesday that the city plans to meet with the county to discuss landscaping options.

Amtrak also is open to discussions, said spokesman Marc Magliari.

"That's the architecture of that time, in the '70s and '80s," Magliari said. "In some people's minds, that architecture hasn't aged well."

Other cities have updated their stations, he said. Milwaukee modernized its 1960s-era building by adding a glass front. St. Paul, Minn. is renovating its historic station downtown to replace a station built in the 1970s.

Moving the Amtrak station -- used by 46,400 passengers last year -- to Tower City is not an option, Magliari said.

But the station could move east, if voters approve a Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority tax in November, Appelbaum said. Some of the tax revenues would be used to build a bridge from Mall C to the waterfront, and a station could be built underneath.

For now, Appelbaum will settle for trees and shrubs.

"We're talking about a short-term solution," he said.