The organizers behind the forthcoming 11th Street Bridge Park — D.C.’s first elevated public park — announced Wednesday the first of five commissioned artworks. The Jackson Jarvis Studio, comprised of local mother-daughter duo Martha Jackson Jarvis and Njena Surae Jarvis, will install the $400,000 sculptures entitled “Anacostia’s Sunrise/Sunset Portals,” a series of 11 multi-colored arches to welcome visitors into the park that’s set to open in 2025.

The “Portals” will be the largest of the park’s public art pieces and was selected by a panel of nine residents, artists, and stakeholders from ages 16 to 80, many of whom live near the park. The group will announce the four additional art commissions in late April, with project director Scott Kratz saying they’ve already identified 12 semifinalists.

D.C. artist Martha Jackson Jarvis’ public art often incorporates nature, celebrating species native to the region. Her works appear at the Anacostia and Van Ness/UDC Metro stations, the Prince George’s County Courthouse, and the New York Transit Authority, among other regional and national locations. “My works are attentive to ecosystems, decay, rebirth, sedimentation and transformative form,” Jackson Jarvis writes on her website. She adds in a statement that visitors to her newest sculpture are meant to experience the “unobstructed rhythms of the landscape and cascades of seasonal color and reflection.”

Surae Jarvis, a D.C. artist and Duke Ellington School of the Arts alum, added in a statement: “Our ‘Anacostia Portals’ function as a beacon, a symbol of hope and welcome to the 11th Street Bridge Park community celebrating the historic Anacostia River biome.”

Plans for the multi-million-dollar park feature a hammock grove, public plaza, amphitheater, environmental education center, playspace, and a cafe, all based on a design by OMA+OLIN (a partnership between the Netherlands-based team OMA and Philadelphia-based OLIN Studio), chosen after a months-long competition. The park is a collaboration between the D.C. government and the Ward 8 nonprofit Building Bridges Across the River (BBAR)

Watch a virtual tour of the park design below:

Planning for a community-driven park on the old concrete piers along the Anacostia River that could rival New York’s High Line began in 2014. Its original budget was $40 million, but that quickly ballooned to $139 million, with corporate sponsors including JPMorgan Chase, Capital One, and Exelon. The park was originally scheduled to be complete in 2019, and then 2023, but the estimated opening has now been pushed to early 2025.

BBAR says the project will reconnect Anacostia with the rest of the city, and that it’s already created 125 jobs, and generated $3.5 million in direct income for residents through wages and events. However, some community organizers have raised concerns that the park could push out longtime neighbors if it results in a real-estate boom akin to the one in Chelsea, where New York’s High Line is located. One study by urban planners found that long greenway parks increase a neighborhood’s chances of gentrification by over 200 percent. The 11th Street Bridge Park planners released a plan in 2015 outlining their commitment to equity for the surrounding communities in Wards 6, 7, and 8.

“The 11th Street Bridge Park is a community-imagined space and it was important that the art and artists selected for our largest commissioned piece be reflective of this community,” said Scott Kratz, of BBAR, in a statement. “We’re ecstatic to see Jackson Jarvis Studio’s vision for ‘Anacostia’s Sunrise/Sunset Portals’ come to life and bring a welcoming energy to the park’s eastern entrance while helping expand equitable access to art East of the River.”