Construction equipment is starting up Thursday to begin building the Collection, the latest condominium tower to rise in Kakaako.

The project’s developer, Alexander & Baldwin Inc., held a groundbreaking ceremony Wednesday on the site once occupied by a CompUSA store to thank everyone helping the roughly $200 million tower get off the ground, including government officials, contractors and especially homebuyers.

"You are the ones who really make this possible," Chris Benjamin, A&B’s president, told buyers attending the event on the site under a big tent.

A&B needed a high-enough number of unit sales to break ground given financial risks. The company said about 75 percent of the 397 condos in the tower have buyers, of whom 85 percent are local residents.

Ky Vuong, the owner of Key Fitness Hawaii and a unit buyer who attended the ceremony, said he is excited about the building and the emerging neighborhood where restaurants, shops and low-rise residential units are intended to wrap several condo towers to be built over the next few years.

"I think it’s going to be like San Francisco and Central Park all meshed in," he said. "This is going to be the prime area. I love this community."

Vuong currently lives further mauka in Kakaako in the Moana Pacific tower across from McKinley High School, but said he was drawn closer to where more activity is planned.

Dickson Wong, a Hawaii Youth Correctional Facility worker, also bought a Collection unit as part of a relocation plan within Kakaako. Wong and his wife wanted a bigger home to replace one in the Pacifica Honolulu tower on Kapiolani Boulevard and were attracted to what A&B planned.

"We liked the design," he said.

The Collection includes a tower along with a midrise building with 54 condos and three-story townhomes with 14 units. Everything but the townhomes has been released for sale at prices from $380,000 to $1 million.

A&B expects to finish the Collection in late 2016. The project would be the third high-rise condo in Kakaako developed by the company, which finished Keola La‘i in 2008 and is nearing completion on Waihonua at Kewalo.

The Collection is part of a master plan by Kamehameha Schools dubbed Our Kaka‘ako for nine blocks in the area largely along Ala Moana Boulevard between South Street and Ward Avenue.

The landowner, which sold the Collection site to A&B, has arranged for four other developers — Stanford Carr, Castle & Cooke Homes, Gerding Edlen, and a partnership between the MacNaughton Group and Kobayashi Group — to build four other high-rise and mid-rise residential buildings in the largely industrial area.

"This place is going to become alive," Mayor Kirk Caldwell said at the ceremony.