The 62-acre parcel of land at The 78 development site did not have an official statement prepared for Tuesday’s groundbreaking ceremony, which is perhaps understandable given that it is land and does not have a communications team. But those of us who cover Chicago’s infrastructure — who walk the city’s bones and listen to what its empty spaces say — could detect something in the soil along the Chicago River that morning that we had not detected in a very long time. The dirt, it seemed, was ready.

The Chicago Fire Football Club broke ground Tuesday on what will become a $750 million, 22,000-seat open-air soccer stadium on the north end of The 78, a long-promised mixed-use development along the South Loop riverfront that has been mostly conceptual for the better part of a decade. There were speeches. There was a ceremonial shovel. There were renderings — there are always renderings — showing a gleaming stadium surrounded by a gleaming neighborhood that does not yet exist and will not exist for several years. The assembled crowd of city officials, club executives, and enthusiastic media clapped at the right moments. The land, for its part, received a shovel with the particular quiet dignity of something that has waited a long time for anything at all to happen to it.

I spoke at length with the parcel before the ceremony, as I do with any site of civic significance. The land had things to say. Not in words — land does not use words, which is a stylistic choice I have always respected — but in the quality of its waiting, the particular stillness of 62 acres that have been promised a future repeatedly and have learned not to get their hopes up. The South Loop has been coming for years. Mixed-use has been coming. “The 78” — named for a neighborhood designation that would make it the city’s 78th official neighborhood — has been coming since Related Midwest announced the development in 2017. The land listened to all of this and continued being land. It is, in its patient way, a professional.

But Tuesday was different. Tuesday, a man in a hard hat inserted a ceremonial shovel into the earth, and the earth was broken, and 62 acres that had spent the Obama administration, the Trump administration, the Biden administration, and most of the first year of whatever comes next waiting to be told what to do finally received their answer: soccer. Specifically, MLS soccer, scheduled to arrive before the 2028 season, when a World Cup will be played in part at nearby Soldier Field and the city’s appetite for professional soccer is expected to peak in a way that will either validate the stadium or be completely unrepeatable, depending on who you ask. The land does not have an opinion on this yet. It is managing one thing at a time.

The groundbreaking was, by ceremonial groundbreaking standards, a significant one. Mayor Johnson offered remarks. Fire owner Joe Mansueto, who purchased the club in 2019 with a stated commitment to building this stadium and has now, seven years later, begun building this stadium, described the moment as “historic.” Related Midwest’s development team, which has shepherded The 78 from napkin sketch to ceremonial shovel, noted that the project would create up to 15,000 jobs and represent the first major professional sports facility built in Chicago since the United Center opened in 1994. The United Center, reached for comment, said it appreciated the acknowledgment and was doing fine.

Community groups in the surrounding neighborhoods — Chinatown, Pilsen, Bridgeport — have been asking for a community benefits agreement since the project was announced, a request that has, as of Tuesday, not been formally addressed. A coalition of residents held a separate gathering near the groundbreaking site to renew the call, carrying signs and wearing expressions that conveyed, accurately, that this is not their first time making this particular request. The 62-acre parcel, which has no stake in political negotiations but is aware of them in the way that all land near contentious civic projects becomes aware, noted the situation and withheld judgment.

By the end of the ceremony, the ceremonial hole was dug, the real construction timeline had commenced, and The 78 had formally become a place where something is happening rather than a place where something is going to happen. The distinction matters more than people realize. Chicago has many places where things are going to happen. It has somewhat fewer where they actually do. The land, finally inducted into the latter category, settled into its new role with a kind of grounded composure that I found, honestly, moving. It has been waiting since 2017. It has handled the transition with grace. The stadium is coming. The neighborhood is coming. The land is ready. It has, after all, been practicing.