CLEVELAND, Ohio - The Group Plan Commission and a team of designers are unveiling dramatically revised designs for an outdoor cafe that will be a principal centerpiece in the $32 million renovation of Public Square.

Designs for the cafe will be publicly presented Thursday at a meeting of the city's Euclid Corridor Design Review Committee and Friday at a meeting of the city's Planning Commission. The plans first appeared publicly Wednesday afternoon on the Planning Commission's website.

Designed by nARCHITECTS of New York with Westlake Reed Leskosky of Cleveland, the design calls for a gemlike, trapezoidal structure sheathed in lustrous panels of folded steel.

The 2,250-square-foot structure will occupy a portion of the southwestern quadrant of the redesigned square in a sweeping renovation scheduled for completion in time for the 2016 Republican National Convention.

"It holds the corner and creates a destination there, and by offering food as well as public restrooms, it will be a social activator," Richard Kennedy, a principal of James Corner Field Operations, the New York firm designing the new landscape for Public Square, said Tuesday in a phone interview.

The reconstruction of the 10-acre civic space at the heart of the city will remove the two north-south blocks of Ontario Street that cut through the square.

The two blocks of Superior Avenue running east-west through the square will remain open for buses, with the capability of being closed easily for special events.

The north half of the square will feature an open lawn area with a concert hill and a picnic hill in the corners. The south half of the square will feature the cafe, a water feature and improved landscaping around the 1894 Soldiers and Sailors Monument.

The nonprofit Group Plan Commission, which is overseeing the square's renovation, announced last week it had raised nearly all of the construction money needed for the project, and is now seeking to boost an endowment for maintenance and programming.

The design team for Public Square originally envisioned the cafe as an elliptical structure clad in black metal panels and glass.

As they tested the idea with a potential cafe operator - whom the Group Plan Commission declined to name because negotiations are still under way - they realized a rectilinear design would be more functional.

The cafe will contain a box-shaped kitchen set atop the underground service vault containing mechanical equipment for a water feature, or splash zone.

The kitchen will have an open counter, possibly a bar, that will face into an enclosed dining area able to seat 65 to 68 patrons. Thirty sets of tables and chairs will be located outside the cafe on a granite-paved plaza.

Bollards will demarcate an area inside of which beer and wine could be served.

The intention of the design is to animate the building on all sides. To achieve that goal, the designers are treating the rear wall of the structure, which faces the Terminal Tower, as an art-display surface that would support paintings, sculptures, banners and possibly, digital media or light displays.

Outdoor heaters may be located around the cafe in the "shoulder" seasons to extend use of the facility, although the designers intend that the interior could be usable year-round.

"The clean lines and simplicity [of the design] really fit into the park," said Jeremy Paris, executive director of the Group Plan Commission, which is also overseeing other public space improvements in downtown Cleveland, including enhanced landscaping on the downtown Mall and a $25 million lakefront pedestrian bridge.