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After years of delays, state lawmakers and other dignitaries gathered Wednesday for a groundbreaking ceremony to mark the start of construction of a $48 million civic center in Wahiawa.

The two-building, 61,000-square-foot center, located off the main thoroughfare of California Avenue, will be the home to a district court facility, a state office complex and a City and County of Honolulu Satellite City Hall. The work will involve the redevelopment of the existing Wahiawa Public Library, which is right behind the site and will be a new Resource and Education Center facility.

The complex, which will act as a consolidated government service center for central Oahu and the North Shore, has been a pet project of State Sen. Donovan Dela Cruz, who was born and raised in the former plantation town and is chair of the Senate Ways and Means Committee.

He noted that community leaders have been asking for a civic center for decades and credited many others for helping bring the project to life.

They included Lt. Gov. Sylvia Luke, who helped secure the funding when she was chair of the House Finance Committee, and Hawaii Supreme Court Chief Justice Mark Recktenwald. Both joined him at a groundbreaking ceremony on Wednesday.

Keith Regan, the state comptroller who emceed the ceremony, called the civic center’s creation “a commitment, an investment in our community. It’s a message that says we must continue to ensure that services are readily available to our people, even if they do not live in the urban core.”

Put another way, residents living in the area won’t have to make the drive into town to access vital services.

Previous plans to build the civic center never materialized and the site has been occupied by a series of temporary, substandard buildings offering government services.

The project hit another snag a year ago when then-Gov. David Ige declined to sign off on the revised environmental impact statement. That hurdle has since been cleared.

The Department of Accounting and General Services didn’t respond to a request for a timeline for completion of the construction or a cost estimate. But Dela Cruz has said previously that it could be completed as early as 2026 and would cost $48 million.

Luke singled out Dela Cruz for his “compassion, his drive, his vision and foresight” for making the project happen.

“As a former elected official in the Legislature and now with the honor of representing the state of Hawaii, you find gems in elected officials who love what they do and love their community,” she said. “And what you see here is the culmination of a 30-year-plus vision and drive that the community asks for.”

Dela Cruz has brought hundreds of millions in development funds to the community.

Dela Cruz shared details of the town with the VIP audience: It was founded in the 1890s, and the area where they gathered was the center of town — hence the name for nearby Center Street. The library sits on the site of what was once one of the town’s two hotels.

The transit center is right across the street, where a train station once was. It’s called Cane Street because that’s where the sugar cane was transported, he explained. And the main drag is California Avenue because the farmers of the time hailed from that state, long before any ordinance or statute required streets be named in Hawaiian.

Dela Cruz, who lives just a block away from the site, said even the rain couldn’t douse his excitement.

“You know, this kind of weather is actually a blessing in Wahiawa,” he said. “The rain is going to just wash away all the things that are not so good and actually support things and feed things that are going to start to begin.”

Recktenwald noted that his predecessor, the late Ronald Moon, grew up in Wahiawa. And a courtroom in the new building will be named after the late First Circuit District Judge Darolyn Lendio Heim, who hailed from nearby Waialua and presided in Wahiawa.

When the speeches were done and Kahu Peter Lonoaea had completed the blessing, it was time to break ground with the dignitaries taking up traditional Hawaiian digging sticks. That’s when the rain let up and the sun briefly peaked through the darks clouds.