Create a region-based pane to display blocks from core blocks system

Motivation:
I would like to use Panels (and Panels Everywhere) to define panels-based pages and site layouts.

Request:
I would like to be able to enable specific Drupal block regions (presumably via panes) and allow block administrators the ability to use Drupal's core blocks system to manage blocks in particular regions.
For example, I would like to remove "footer" and "header" regions from my theme and manage them through a panels layout.
But, I would like "content top" and "content bottom" regions to be available to my panels layout, so that when they're enabled in a particular pane, the blocks assigned to those regions through block UI display therein.

Possible Approach:
I imagine the implementation to allow a Panels administrator to simply assign a system region to a content pane, and be able to set various configurations on that pane. When the pane is rendered, the blocks assigned to that system region will be rendered in the pane according to their weights and whatever pane-specific configurations.