Groundbreaking goes digital for New Grenada Square Apartments and Retail project

PITTSBURGH — There’s still shovels and dirt and an open plot on which a new construction project soon will rise.

But the Hill Community Development Corporation has taken that common development ritual of the groundbreaking, in which community leaders take a ceremonial poke into a pile of dirt to launch a new construction project, and converted it to a digital format so nobody has to be there in person.

The project is the New Granada Square Apartments and Retail, a $16 million apartment project the Hill CDC is building in partnership with CHN Housing Partners that is expected to include 40 affordable one- and two-bedroom units along with 5,000 square feet of retail space in a development companion to the ongoing restoration of the historic New Grenada Theater.