CLEVELAND, Ohio - Call it a wash. Participants were evenly split at a public meeting Tuesday over two contrasting early visions for the future Irishtown Bend park overlooking the Cuyahoga River in Ohio City.

One concept, called "Neighborhood Portals," called for a zigzag hillside trail on the 17-acre slope, plus a "boulder scramble," a zip line and a large playground along West 25th Street in Ohio City.

The other, called "City Theater," treated the big Irishtown hillside - now a weed-choked mess that threatens to slide into the river - as a bucolic slice of nature in the city, emphasizing "passive" enjoyment of a grand open space with a spectacular skyline view.

(See the complete presentation embedded at the bottom of this post).

Both ideas found advocates at Tuesday night's meeting at the St. Ignatius High School Breen Center, where about 200 people from around Cleveland and Northeast Ohio showed up to hear about the plans and share their views.

Entrepreneur and developer Graham Veysey said he liked the more active vision of the park as a play zone that would attract users without needing extensive formal programming. And he didn't like the more natural vision.

"I don't think Cleveland does 'passive' very well," he said. He pointed to Settler's Landing Park, a landscaped slope on the East Bank of the Cuyahoga River, as evidence of his assertion, saying it's rarely used.

Lakefront parks activist Dick Cough, chairman of the Green Ribbon Coalition, said the zip line proposed for the activity-oriented "Neighborhood Portals" concept would quickly become passe.

"You put that up and it's going to be very popular for a summer," he said.

Despite the conflicting views, it would have been hard to find anyone Tuesday who disliked the idea of a park at Irishtown Bend, named for a 19th-century Irish immigrant settlement.

"They did a very good job of envisioning how Irishtown Bend could capture the magic you see at the High Line in New York or Gasworks Park in Seattle," said Michael Bidwell of Chagrin Falls, sole proprietor of a software firm.

Scott Cataffa, a principal with San Francisco-based CMG Landscape Architecture, the firm leading the design process, said he wasn't looking for a strict vote on the two visions to guide how he and colleagues develop a single unified concept that they'll present for another round of feedback late this summer.

"It won't be entirely data driven," he said. "We wanted to take the pulse of the community and see which things rise."

Planners for the Port of Cleveland, Ohio City Inc. and LAND Studio hope that the plans for the park would help generate political and financial support for the estimated $49 million it will take to stabilize the Irishtown hillside and build the park atop the reconfigured slope. No timetable has been set.

Tom McNair, executive director of Ohio City Inc., one of the agencies collaborating on the planning project, said he was thrilled by the turnout Tuesday.

"This was everything we were hoping for," he said. "We got a fantastic turnout. The room was packed. And, ultimately we're trying to get input from as many people as possible so that as we move forward this can truly be the public's park."