Developers on Monday lifted the first shovelfuls of dirt to transform acres of empty land along the Ohio River into luxury high-rises, a marina, houseboats and a Ferris wheel — a project nearly a decade in the making on Pittsburgh’s North Side.

Canonsburg-based Piatt Companies joined elected officials and North Side residents to break ground on Esplanade, a $740 million effort to revamp the banks of the river in Chateau.

The 15-acre site is a brownfield, used by industrial companies for over a century but largely vacant today. Piatt’s plans — approved by city officials last year — are expected to create thousands of jobs and inject millions of dollars into the North Side.

“Today is an accumulation of thousands of hours of work, dozens of community meetings, hundreds of stakeholder meeti

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