CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Cleveland's long-discussed dream of lakefront development will become much more solid this month, as developers take a big step toward controlling the land and seek early design approvals for a restaurant near Voinovich Park and their first apartments and offices north of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum.

After more than a year of negotiations, Cumberland Development and Trammell Crow Co. expect to meet a June 15 deadline to exercise their option to lease 28 acres of city-owned land along Lake Erie. That move will start the clock ticking on the companies' ambitious plan to create a neighborhood on underused properties at tip of East Ninth Street and the northern rim of First Energy Stadium.

Documents submitted to the Cleveland City Planning Commission indicate that Cleveland-based Cumberland and Trammell Crow, of Dallas, aim to break ground within months for their first two buildings.

A large, casual restaurant, with abundant outdoor seating and a rooftop bar, would sit just east of Voinovich Park. Permanent public-restroom buildings would replace portable bathrooms at the end of the East Ninth Street Pier. Site plans prepared by Dimit Architects also show bocce courts and three sand volleyball courts, which would become ice-skating rinks in winter.

Near the Rock Hall, a three-story building would rise on the site of a former skateboarding park. A few dozen parking spaces wrapped by stores and restaurants would occupy the first floor, with roughly 16,500 square feet of offices on the second level and eight penthouse apartments above. Developer Dick Pace, president of Cumberland, describes the building as a microcosm of the much larger project, which could include more than 1,000 apartments, a hotel, more offices and a school.

Work on the first two buildings, with a potential $7 million to $10 million price tag, might start in September. Pace hopes to open the restaurant and finish the exterior, at least, of the three-story building before the Republican National Convention puts center-city construction projects on pause in July 2016.

"We think that the first phase of the project is going to be an exciting start," said Edward Rybka, the city's regional development chief. "It's going to be an example of what the larger build-out will be like, and it's exciting to think that by Labor Day we could be under construction for the development of a neighborhood on Cleveland's lakefront. That is something that has eluded the city forever."

Rybka and Pace said they're confident they'll execute the option-to-lease deal by mid-June, the date laid out in legislation approved by Cleveland City Council last year. Meanwhile, Pace is seeking a first round of design approvals for the first two buildings this week. He'll present to a city design-review committee Thursday and the planning commission Friday. Both bodies will need to see the projects again, later this summer, for final approval.

"We very much want it open for the RNC," Pace said of the waterfront restaurant, "because we think this will be one of the great spots for people to take pictures with the skyline in the background - and to have a place to go where they don't have to rely on Port-a-Johns. I don't necessarily think you want the presidential candidates out there using Port-a-Johns."

In early 2014, Cleveland picked Cumberland and Trammell Crow to pursue construction of a lakefront neighborhood based on a city-approved master plan. In addition to buildings, that lakefront plan calls for plenty of public spaces, ways to touch the water and convenience connections for people on foot and on bicycles.

Cleveland can't sell the lakefront sites without a public vote, so the city expects to enter long-term leases with the developers. The parties have spent the last year studying the property and working through the complexities of their deal.

The city needed an appraisal - now complete - to set a fair lease rate, which is still being determined. The developers needed environmental assessments to understand what they're getting into and to better pinpoint construction costs.

And Cleveland had to hammer out an underlying lease deal with the state, through a long and arcane process. The downtown lakefront was created using fill dirt from dredging. The state asserts that it owns the land beneath that dirt - land that used to form the bottom of Lake Erie. So Cleveland had to lease that underlying land from the state before striking surface-level lease deals with any developer.

Now enough of the pieces are in place that the city and the Cumberland joint venture feel comfortable enough to push ahead. Pace hopes to sign his first land-leases with the city soon after executing his option. He's talking to an unidentified local restaurant operator about the site near Voinovich Park, and he already has a list of would-be apartment dwellers interested in the penthouses.

"This is the closest we've ever come to something actually happening," said City Councilman Joe Cimperman, who represents much of downtown. "I think the developer has everything to do with that, as well as the mayor saying we're going to make this thing happen. I think there's going to be a lot of support and collaboration to that end."

Through the city, the developers are seeking $250,000 in state grants to help pay for the public restrooms and the volleyball courts. The grant application, submitted to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, proffers a $132,000 match from Cumberland and Trammell Crow, Rybka said.

Beyond that money earmarked for parks and outdoor recreation, the first projects won't require much in the way of public funding, Pace said. Financing is likely to come from traditional banks, instead of the big, institutional lenders that the developers are courting for later, larger phases of the lakefront neighborhood.

The apartments would qualify for the city's tax-abatement program for new residential construction. And the developers are asking the city to consider a reconfiguration of a public parking lot along the East Ninth Street Pier, to create roughly 25 additional parking spaces, allow for more landscaping and shift to a kiosk system that would charge hourly rather than daily rates.

"We also hope that this is a site where the water taxi stops," Pace said, referencing a defunct service that the Cleveland Metroparks plans to revive on the Cuyahoga River. "We have had some preliminary discussions with some of the people involved in that. We don't have a commitment, but we would like to see that happen."

He said other potential retail tenants include a bike-tours company, a bait-and-tackle shop and restaurants where boaters and families renting paddleboats, kayaks or jet-skis can grab a quick bite. Those uses dovetail with a waterfront-recreation plan that Pace hopes to present to the planning commission this summer.

That plan includes a possible sailing center, with boat storage; permanent and floating docks to accommodate a range of boats; pedestrian paths; and, long-term, an outcropping that could accommodate swimming pools for adults and children. Pace also is talking to the Great Lakes Science Center about incorporating a restaurant into the William G. Mather, a Great Lakes freighter than now functions as a floating museum and tourist attraction. The science center owns the steamship.

Trammell Crow and Cumberland still are hashing out plans for later phases of construction, such as a connector planned between the Rock Hall and the science center. The developers have lost roughly 60 percent of their 1-acre site between the museums to the northern end of a planned pedestrian bridge that will stretch north from the grassy downtown Malls, over roads and railroad tracks.

"We hope that we're ready to start work on the second phase a year from now," Pace said, adding "it probably would be a year from the day after the RNC."