CLEVELAND, Ohio - The Cleveland Museum of Art and Case Western Reserve University want to create a park as an interim step toward future development on a sizable and highly visible property on East Boulevard opposite the museum.

On Thursday, the museum and CWRU, which bought the 4.2-acre property for $9.2 million from the Cleveland Institute of Art in 2013, unveiled plans for the park at a meeting of the city's Euclid Corridor Design Review Committee.

The university and the museum also want to remove a parking lot and the two-story, 1956 building on the property that used to house art institute classrooms and administrative offices.

The design review committee unanimously approved the demolition and the park design. Both steps will be reviewed by the city planning commission on Friday in a step required before the project can receive a building permit.

The property, located at 11141 East Blvd., is widely viewed as one of the most important remaining pieces of open land in University Circle, the city's cultural, educational and medical hub.

CWRU and the art museum bought an undivided, 50-50 interest in the property, and plan to develop it together.

The demolition and park construction, scheduled to start this summer, will cost roughly $1.5 million, Matt Langan, a senior associate of Sasaki Associates, which is designing the park, said at the committee meeting.

Stephen Campbell, the university's vice president for campus planning and facilities management, said before the meeting that the property could accommodate 450,000 square feet of construction, roughly 75 percent of the size of the art museum itself.

The land is in a multi-family residential zone that would allow construction up to 175 feet high without a variance or special permit.

Campbell said that an architect would not be hired to design anything for the site until 2023, and nothing permanent would be built before 2028.

The museum has discussed using the property to house its art history library or other functions that would enable it to convert more of its complex at 11150 East Blvd. to galleries or storage spaces for art.

CWRU and the museum have discussed using the property to build a permanent facility for their 50-year-old joint program in art history, revitalized in 2013 with a $15 million donation from philanthropists Nancy and Joseph Keithley, and also named for them.

The property is also big enough to hold a high-rise residential tower that could generate revenues to help support any cultural or academic facilities in a manner similar to the Museum of Modern Art condominium tower in New York.

When asked before Thursday's meeting about the future of the site, CWRU President Barbara Snyder said: "We don't want to foreclose possibilities by throwing ideas out there. We want to keep everything and anything on the table that could be good for the Cleveland Museum of Art and Case Western Reserve University and our community."

William Griswold, director of the museum, said, "the sky is the limit with what we can accomplish as we set our minds to it."

The park, to be called East Bell Commons, would in the meantime provide tree shaded walks and a performance stage and would be equipped with movable seats during events, museum and CWRU officials said.

It could host commencement events or part of the museum's annual summer Parade the Circle and Solstice celebrations.

"I see an opportunity here to co-organize all kinds of pop-up festivals and other events to attract audiences to University Circle," Griswold said.

The park is designed to frame future projects envisioned in the university's 2015 master plan, which it has not yet formally released.

Those plans include two potential buildings whose footprints are outlined in the park proposal, plus an expansion of Mather Quadrangle, a grassy plaza that would extend across a part of Bellflower Road that the university would like to close.

Snyder said the master plan would be fully shared with the public by mid-May.