Sal’s Pizza owner Salvatore Lupoli isn’t just baking fresh pies these days, he’s building an entire real estate empire and topping it with more than a thousand new housing units.

Lupoli, CEO of the Lupoli Companies, was in Littleton on Monday to break ground at 550 King Street, the site of a former IBM complex and the planned home of a massive investment into the Nashoba Valley town called the King Street Crossing Project.

The CEO was joined at the ceremonial ground breaking by Gov. Maura Healey, U.S. Rep. Lori Trahan, former Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito, Secretary of Housing and Livable Communities Ed Augustus, state Sen. Jamie Eldridge, state Rep. James Arciero, and members of the Littleton Select Board among other state and local officials, to mark another step in solving the state’s housing crisis.

“In no time, where you’re sitting is going to be transformed. This is going to be a village, it’s just going to be unbelievable” Healey told the ground breaking attendees. “550 King Street is a hugely important project for Massachusetts.”

The plan would transform the 46-acre site into a commercial park with over 600,000 square feet of office and lab space. HIPER Global, an electronics manufacturer, has already leased 72,000 square feet for the construction of their new global headquarters.

About 1,100 housing units are planned to go alongside the businesses and amenities like a 150-room hotel, 115,000 square feet of restaurants and retail shops, and public greenspaces. The site sits just minutes away from the MBTA commuter rail and close to I-495.

According to a master plan filed with the town of Littleton, the development calls for 10% of the housing units to be affordable units priced for those making 80% of the area median income or less, with about half of those set aside as 30% to 60% AMI-cost housing for seniors.

The governor said the project “shows what is possible” in Massachusetts when public and private interests align and represents “the very best of private-public partnership.”

“It turns out you can have kick-ass economic development, you can bring in more housing, you can create more vibrancy, and all of our residents are going to do well by it,” she said.

Healey gave credit to her predecessors in the Baker-Polito Administration for passing the grant funding required for Lupoli to get the massive project off the ground.

Lupoli credited his employees and thanked his family for their ongoing support, before explaining how grateful he was to be provided the opportunity to build in Littleton.

“I just want to give you my word, governor, I will never let you down. I will do whatever it takes, this organization will do whatever it takes. And I’m grateful and I’m truly humbled by the town of Littleton to the show the leadership, to show every other city and town in the state of Massachusetts, that you don’t have to have a population of a million people to do big, bold, audacious things. The town of Littleton has set that course,” he said.