YAKIMA -- Not often does a work of public art get a lot of notice. Then again, not often does anybody try to light up a pair of underpasses.

In what is sure to become a major landmark in Yakima, the city is putting the finishing touches on a colorful $700,000 plan to wash the gray out of the biggest public works project in the city's history.

That project is the $42 million twin railroad underpasses set for construction on Lincoln Avenue and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. The antidote is "Yakima Illuminations: Bins of Light," an homage to the city's history as the apple capital of the nation.

Featuring dozens of brightly lit glass panels made to the scale of apple bins, the project has been lauded as another example of a newfound can-do spirit that, along with the remaking of the Capitol Theatre, is rapidly changing the look and feel of Yakima.

"I think this will be a tourist draw, I really do," said Norm Johnson, a member of the City Council and a key backer of the plan. "Really, I just think it's going to be a spectacular piece."

It also may raise an eyebrow or two, given the price tag and the rich potential for vandalism. Civic leaders, however, insist Yakima has to step it up economically and culturally in order to prosper.

The $700,000 sticker represents 1.7 percent of the overall $42 million budget, funded by a mix of federal and state grants along with more modest contributions from the city and the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway.

City officials say the money earmarked for art cannot be spent on anything other than the underpasses.

As for concerns that the underpass project has a $6 million shortfall, city officials insist they are confident the state or the feds will come through with the remainder of the funding.

They have an unlikely ally in council member Bill Lover, a fiscal conservative who says he wholeheartedly endorses the proposed art as "first-class all the way."

"It's a project that deserves some art," he said. "Otherwise, it's a big gray eyesore."

Newly elected council member Kathy Coffey, the former head of the Visitors and Convention Bureau, also defended the project, which has been greenlighted by the council several times in recent months and is on the verge of going to contract.

"We have a right to have nice things," she said. "We're not a second-class city, and it's time for us to make a statement."

The project is not required by law. Instead, it reflects the opinion of civic leaders that a public works project on the order of the underpasses needed some color.

Set in motion as early as 2001, the project began to pick up steam last fall when the city council appointed an ad hoc committee led by Allied Arts director Elizabeth Herres Miller to come back with some proposals.

Miller says the goal was to pick something memorable but not too abstract that captured Yakima's heritage and "sense of place."

"When we are attracted to a community, it's because of what's there," said Miller, who recently retired from Allied Arts. "We want people to walk away from Yakima and remember us (and) remember being here."

Eventually the committee and the council settled on "Bins of Light" by Seattle artists Laura Haddad and Tom Drugan, a married couple with a background in big public art projects.

Their creation involves dozens of lighted glass panels stacked like apple bins. During the day, the panels will be lit by Yakima's abundant sunshine. At night, LED lights will do the work.

The panels will face motorists as they enter the underpasses, Lincoln from the east and MLK from the west. On the flip side of the panels will be etchings of old-time apple labels, the brainchild of Yakima Valley Museum Director John Baule, who literally wrote the book on such labels.

As an added attraction, the lights will fire in sequence when trains pass by.

Miller said she's aware there might be some fiscal opposition to the project but predicted the public will quickly embrace it as "just plain cool" once they see it for themselves.

As for the money, she defended public art as an investment by the community that will pay dividends in the future in terms of tourism and the city's reputation.

Said Miller, "This has not been done lightly. It's a huge bang for the buck."