To come up with a vision for Mobile’s future Brookley by the Bay park, planners drafted a couple of distinct alternative concepts – then sort of mashed them together.

Thursday evening, the city held the third in a series of three public meetings on the park, a tract of more than 90 acres of bayfront property south of downtown near the Brookley aeroplex. The focus of the first meeting, held back in September, had been to kickstart the process of learning what features the public would like to have. The focus of this one was to show how many of them the planners had been able to accommodate.

“We wanted everyone to see how we incorporated everything everybody wanted in this space,” said Shonnda Smith, deputy director of public works and the city’s parks and recreation director. “The biggest thing has been access to the beach, access to water.”

Maps displayed at the Harmon-Thomas Community Center on Thursday showed a wide range of features laid out to capitalize on the major assets of the terrain, which include tree-covered areas, lawns and shore zones with a variety of characteristics. In the plans shown, a large central lawn is circled by a three-quarter-mile track; a small waterfront amphitheater provides a venue for music; a meandering perimeter trail connects beaches and other features, providing more than a mile of additional recreational path; and boardwalks reach into marshier terrain. Play areas, a disc golf course, picnic tables and shelters, a fenced dog run, ADA-compliant beach access and a kayak launch add to the attractions.

“A vision is really kind of setting a tone for what this park will be,” said Brad Howe, design director for SCAPE, a company hired by the city to guide what he called “a six-month visioning process.”

“It’s not a detailed design,” said Howe. “There’s a long way to go to get to detailed designs.”

How long? That’s an unknown. Smith said building out the vision could cost in the ballpark of $25 million. That’s likely to come from a mix of sources that could include grants, city appropriations and other funding, she said.

At the second of the three meetings, Howe said, planners had showed off two concepts. One, called “Programmed Deltas;” focused on meandering through nature. The other, “Loops and Berms,” was more about packing in features. People liked elements of both, Howe said, so the idea was “to take those preferences and really combine them into one scheme.”

The upshot, Howe said, is a game plan that will preserve the natural charms of the site while opening it up to a wide variety of public use.

The plans shown at Thursday’s meeting will be available online “soon” at the planning site www.brookelybythebay.com. Materials from earlier meetings are featured on the site.

Planners also will be conducting tours of the park site on Saturday, Feb. 4. Tours will start at 9 a.m. and 10:30 a.m. at 254 Old Bay Front Road. Attendance is limited, so anyone interested in taking one of the tours is encouraged to register online in advance.