City officials, developers and Medical University of South Carolina leaders broke ground Thursday on 10 WestEdge, a nine-story building meant to be the public face of the WestEdge development on the west side of the Charleston peninsula.

The building is one of three now underway on the 22-acre site bounded by Spring Street, Lockwood Drive, Fishburne Street and Hagood Avenue, The Post and Courier reported. The three buildings and a new road connecting them represent an investment of about $300 million and about a quarter of the development’s eventual scope, said Michael Maher, CEO of HPF Inc., the nonprofit overseeing the project.

“The end of a long journey,” Maher called it, according to the newspaper.

A project that stalled

The development, once known as the Horizon Project, has been discussed since 1999 but was slowed in large part by the financial crisis, The Post and Courier reported. HPF stands for Horizon Project Foundation. The developers renamed the project WestEdge in May 2015.

The land is owned by the city of Charleston and MUSC. Streets, parking garages, utilities and other public infrastructure are to be paid for through a special tax district the city approved in 2008, which sends property taxes from new development back into the project, the newspaper reported last year.

What’s going up

Work began this spring along Fishburne Street on 99 WestEdge, a 230-unit apartment building with more than 1,000 parking spaces across from Joseph P. Riley Jr. Park. It should be finished next fall, the newspaper reported.

The two buildings closer to Spring Street will hold apartments, restaurants, a swimming pool with Ashley River views, offices, a life science technology accelerator and a Publix supermarket.

10 WestEdge will have 350 apartments above shops and restaurants, wrapped around a five-story, 870-space parking deck. In July, Publix announced it would open a 45,800-square-foot store on the building’s ground floor, the Florida-based chain’s first on the peninsula. Publix expects the store to employ 125 to 150 workers, a company spokeswoman told The Post and Courier.

The building replaces Crosby’s Seafood at 382 Spring St.

Next door, 22 WestEdge, an eight-story research and office building, will share the parking deck. The S.C. Research Authority, the state’s high-tech economic development agency, is in talks to open an incubator for startups in one of the buildings, the newspaper reported.

Construction on what John Long of South City Partners called “the gateway to WestEdge” is scheduled to wrap up in fall 2018. South City Partners and Gateway Development Services, both of Atlanta, are developing the first buildings with Charleston-based WRS Realty, The Post and Courier reported.

Building on an old landfill

The site sits on a defunct landfill. Crews are pouring concrete 75 feet down through topsoil, trash and mud to support roads and high-rises, said Mack Reese of Gateway Development Services. More than 1,700 piles will be driven, and the ground will be six feet higher by the time the buildings start to rise, he told the newspaper.

Mayor John Tecklenburg said the city is planning a $180 million drainage project to keep the area from flooding. He also described plans for a waterfront path along Lockwood from Brittlebank Park to the City Marina.

Why MUSC wants it

MUSC President Dr. David Cole said he hopes WestEdge will help draw researchers and students to the university and biomedical companies to its back yard.

When the Publix deal was announced in July, Cole said a new grocery store would make “healthy food options more accessible for MUSC and for the whole west side of the peninsula.”

Tecklenburg said then that the city is “perfectly positioned to play a leading role in the burgeoning biotech research and development revolution.”

Over 15 to 25 years, WestEdge could add about 2 million square feet of office, retail and residential space and at least 3,000 jobs, The Post and Courier reported in July. At build-out, the plan calls for 51% residential space, 30% research space, 10% commercial development and 9% improvements to existing properties.

“WestEdge presents an exciting vision for a live, learn and earn community, with urbane residences, workplaces and research labs, plus all the amenities that are so important to livability,” Maher said in July.

The site could see about a dozen new buildings over that span, the newspaper reported. For now, the developers say they are building in stages and bringing in retailers early so the development seems cohesive from the start, even as years of work follow.

“It will really feel like that piece is done,” Maher said.