Ed Gainey was beaming on Thursday, even before the first shovel went into the ground for the African Queens Apartments, an $8.1 million mixed-use building in the Hill District of Pittsburgh that will have 12 affordable-housing units, two commercial spaces and resident services like a financial literacy adviser.

Mr. Gainey grew up in a similar neighborhood not far away, raised by a single mother in subsidized housing. The boarded-up buildings and vacant lots in the area have long been familiar to Mr. Gainey, who was elected to be Pittsburgh’s first Black mayor nearly four years ago.

“One of the greatest feelings is when you can develop where you came up at — where you play, where you pray, where you work,” Mr. Gainey said in remarks at the site of the project, which is named for a long-shuttered record store that will be torn down to make way for the new building.

“We need affordable housing, we need an affordable city,” the mayor said to a few dozen people at the groundbreaking. “Help us stabilize and engage where we live, and we’ll build a city for all.”

This was Mr. Gainey at his evocative best, making good on the type of promise that swept him into office on a progressive wave, whose message carried a particular resonance in Pittsburgh during the pandemic.

That grand vision, though, remains far enough off from completion that Mr. Gainey may not be in office long enough to preside over it.