This paper proposes a hybrid wireless mesh network (WMN) architecture that allows the backbone to utilize random connections to access points (APs) in a wireless local area network (WLAN). Theoretical analysis shows that the capacity of a three-tier hybrid WMN is affected by the number of mesh router cells connected to APs, the ratio of access link bandwidth to backbone link bandwidth, and traffic balance among routers with AP access. Simulation results demonstrate that configuring APs and balancing traffic can significantly improve network capacity in the proposed hybrid architecture by taking advantage of wired connections through APs.