The 11th Street Bridge Park, a planned $45 million attraction traversing the Anacostia River, is still years from being built but a nonprofit organization is already making a $50 million commitment to ensure the project does not spur widespread displacement of residents.

Sometimes likened to New York City’s High Line public park, the vision for the 11th Street Bridge Park calls for a public plaza, amphitheater, environmental education center and other amenities to be built along a 1.45-mile stretch of bridge connecting Anacostia to Capitol Hill. Organizers of the project — seeing dramatic increases in housing values east of the river — have released a series of recommendations aimed at making sure poorer residents of the neighborhood aren’t priced out once the park opens in 2018.

Now those recommendations have their first major financial backer, the Local Initiatives Support Corp., a nonprofit organization with offices in 31 sites around the country that has been investing in D.C. neighborhoods since 1982. Grants or loans from LISC have supported the Atlas Performing Arts on H Street, the Town Hall Education Arts Recreation Campus (THEARC) and an Anacostia jobs training center featuring Busboys & Poets that is under construction.

Oramenta Newsome, president of the D.C. office, said she was initially skeptical a park could be built atop a series of abandoned piers.