A ground-breaking ceremony at the site of Urth Caffe’s future Hawthorne organic coffee shop and eatery on Monday morning brought company founders and investors together with community leaders.

They wore hard hats and held gold-colored shovels for photos.

But the gathering was purely symbolic because construction is well underway.

The company is relocating its downtown Los Angeles headquarters — complete with baking, cooking, catering and coffee-roasting facilities — to a repurposed aerospace building in the blue-collar city 15 miles to the south.

It’s also building an attached upscale cafe that will open early next year at 4940 W. 147th St., near Lawndale High School and LA Fitness.

The South Bay Commissary & Cafe will be added to Urth Caffe’s existing locations in West Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, Pasadena, and Laguna Beach. Another bistro is under construction in Orange.

“This is going to be a very dynamic place to visit in the South Bay,” said Shallom Berkman, who founded the company 25 years ago with his wife, Jilla. “This is the heart and soul of Urth Caffe.”

Utility trenches are dug and being filled inside the 1960s-era, 39,000-square-foot warehouse. The 1.5-acre Hawthorne complex was most recently home to Microcosm Inc., Scorpius Space Launch Co., Holochip Corp. and other providers of aerospace industry systems.

The site was purchased last year for $6.8 million, according to the Los Angeles County Assessor’s Office.

“The residents of our great city are excited and proud to have such a highly sought after restaurateur that provides excellent food, and serves as a gathering point for so many people with discerning tastes,” Mayor Alex Vargas said. “This is proof positive that Hawthorne is quickly becoming a destination city.”

Next, an environmentally friendly organic coffee roaster will be moved in with German stone-deck ovens that produce the company’s “heirloom ancient-grain breads,” Berkman said.

The dining area will be attached to the production facility and have large windows with views of workers roasting coffee and making pastries and breads.

In the back, an organic herb and vegetable garden will be open to the public. An outdoor wraparound patio also will be built.

“We’ll be doing our own coffee roasting here with an amazing fuel-efficient roasting machine,” Berkman said. “We’re moving everything here. We have more space and this is a home-coming for Urth. Our first location was in Manhattan Beach. We get requests to come back to the South Bay every day.”

The Manhattan Beach cafe opened in 1991 and closed five years later.