CLEVELAND, Ohio - The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum is booting the cheesy plastic shrubs and clunky picnic tables on its entry plaza in favor of green grass, new lighting and loudspeakers, a concert stage and an outdoor cafe.

And smack in the center of the Rock Hall's circular plaza, originally designed to evoke an LP vinyl record (remember those?), will be a row of 6-foot-high letters in red metal spelling out "Long Live Rock."

The Rock Hall's plaza on a gray day in December, with fake plants doing little to warm things up.

The Rock Hall, which just marked its 20th anniversary, is presenting plans for its exterior makeover to the city's Downtown/Flats Design Review Committee and City Planning Commission on Thursday and Friday, respectively.

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.

Lakefront revival

It also relates to other upcoming developments at North Coast Harbor, including a two-story restaurant building for the Nuevo Modern Mexican and Tequila Bar, under construction near the north end of the East Ninth Street pier, scheduled for completion in July in time for the Republican National Convention.

With funding for the Phase 1 work in hand from donors, Rock Hall President and CEO Greg Harris said the exterior revamp would begin as soon as city approval is granted, and should be finished by early summer, also before the convention.

"It's important that we shine then," Harris said of the convention. "But we need to shine all summer long and every day, not just when there's a special event in town. That's what we do."

Designed by BRC Imagination Arts of Burbank, California, the remake of the Rock Hall's plaza is intended to broadcast rock 'n' roll's raucous side at the doorstep of the museum's elegant modernist building, designed by the globally famous architect I.M. Pei.

Coming soon to North Coast Harbor, next door to the Rock Hall: A rendering by architect Scott Dimit of the two-story building under construction next to Voinovich Park that will house a Neuvo Mexican restaurant.

"This is not a pristine art form," said Todd Mesek, the Rock Hall's vice president of marketing and communications. "It's bold, challenging, rebellious. In some ways, you want the building to rebel against itself to be true to its art form and not an ivory tower."

Part of the package

Elements of the project include:

- Half a dozen light poles adorned with loudspeakers.

- An outdoor cafe shaded by sail-shaped panels of fabric, with food served either from a food truck or a shipping container.

- A 20-by-20-foot sheltered concert stage.

- New welcome signs at the plaza's southeast entrance, overlooking the intersection of East Ninth Street and Erieside Avenue.

- New graphics and signs around the Johnny Cash tour bus, which is parked seasonally on the Rock Hall's plaza.

- A new paved motorcycle parking area in the teardrop-shaped parcel next to the entry plaza, off Erieside Avenue.

Another touch includes painting black the circular concrete planters clustered along Erieside Avenue.

The planters - which now contain green plastic shrubs that predated Harris' tenure - will be covered with sheets of steel that in theory could be "tuned" with different levels of sand inside and pounded like drums.

Black and red will be the accent colors for the new exterior elements, and are part of the Rock Hall's new visual brand, which also includes gold.

Black is intended to evoke black leather, instrument cases, amplifiers and the darkness of nightclubs where rock is played, Mesek said. Red represents the energy and power of music. And gold represents induction into the Rock Hall, gold records or other forms of aspiration.

On the inside

Interior facets of the Phase 1 Rock Hall reboot, scheduled for summer or fall, will include a redesign of the building's first-floor and ground-level lobbies to include new retail and cafe areas, and a new ticketing a visitor welcome system.

The work on the plaza is intended to connect visually with the upcoming Rock Box project, a public art installation produced by the museum in partnership with Destination Cleveland.

A rendering of one of the upcoming Rock Box installations.

Rock Box, also scheduled for completion in time for the Republican Convention, will be comprised of stacks of 2-foot-square loudspeakers set in seven locations along East Ninth Street from Progressive Field to the Rock Hall, about 1.25 miles to the north.

The speaker cubes, designed by Cleveland Institute of Art graduate Mark Reigelman II, will be made of black steel, but the central speaker portions, resembling the horn of a gramophone, will be rendered in aluminum painted in bright, shiny colors.

Public art, public music

At regular intervals, the loudspeakers will play instrumental snippets from rock classics, sonically and visually connecting downtown Cleveland to the museum, which now attracts more than a half million visitors a year.

Live music performed on the new outdoor stage on the Rock Hall's plaza will be a central part of Museum 2.0.

Harris said he envisions inviting local and regional bands to perform several hours a day, five days a week, perhaps from noon to 3 p.m., and from early summer to Labor Day.

The museum will tap performers who play locally in the annual Tri-C High School Rock Off competitions, and the triennial Lottery League performances, Harris said, and they will be paid to perform.

"The goal ideally is original music," he said.

Other concerts could start at 7 p.m. Wednesdays, when the Rock Hall is open until 9 p.m.

The overall goal of the museum's new initiative is to project more of the institution's spirit into the public spaces around it and, perhaps, to wrestle with the sleek and somewhat reserved aesthetic of Pei's building.

"We respect it, we honor it, we're thrilled that it's our home," Harris said. "But we're cognizant that this is a shrine to rock 'n' roll, not a shrine to an architect."