This story has been updated throughout following the June 28 groundbreaking ceremony.

Phase 1 of the Houston Spaceport broke ground June 28.

The Houston Airport System celebrated the groundbreaking of phase 1 — an $18.8 million project — with a ceremony at Ellington Airport at 13150 Space Center Blvd. The scope of the project’s first phase includes streets, water, wastewater, electrical power and distribution, fiber optics and communications facilities, according to a media advisory and press release from HAS. The first phase will also include the construction of 53,000 square feet of lab and office space, according to the HAS website. Some 154 acres of land are set aside for phase 1.

Texas Sterling-Banicki JV LLC, a joint venture, is developing the infrastructure for the spaceport, according to a building permit filed with the city of Houston and previous Houston Business Journal reporting. JV partners Houston-based Texas Sterling Construction Co. and Phoenix-based Banicki Construction are both subsidiaries of The Woodlands-based Sterling Construction Company Inc. (Nasdaq: STRL). More than $13.1 million of the $18.8 million will cover TSB’s preconstruction and design services as well as construction services for the infrastructure work.

“When complete, Phase 1 will provide the ground work to support the companies that produce the cutting-edge innovations needed to take commercial space travel and aviation into the sub-sonic, super-sonic and hyper-sonic realm,” Houston Aviation Director Mario Diaz said in the release.

Per the release, the project is designed to attract and support companies across a variety of industries and foster and accelerate key aerospace engineering activities, such as:

Component and composite development and fabrication

Space vehicle assembly

Zero-gravity scientific and medical experiments

Microsatellite deployment

Astronaut training and development

Space tourism

The first company to sign on as a spaceport tenant — Houston-based Intuitive Machines — is already underway on lunar lander and drone technology. On May 31, Intuitive Machines received a $77.2 million contract from NASA to develop, launch and land its Nova-C spacecraft on the lunar surface. The company is on track to be the first private U.S. firm to land a spacecraft on the moon during a planned 2021 mission.

In June 2015, the Federal Aviation Administration granted a launch site license to make Ellington the 10th commercial spaceport in the U.S.