Is it possible for a lightning strike to hit the ground if there are high rise buildings nearby?
Yes.
A lightning conductor on top of a high-rise structure is designed to minimize the possibility of lightning hitting the structure by the virtue of its pointed tip giving rise to very high electric fields (the reason). However this doesn't always ensure that lightning will definitely strike the conductor. This link has quite a few examples of the same.
This is because when cloud-to-ground lightning happens, the lightning goes the way of strong electric fields. Even though the pointed tips of the lightning conductors set up huge electric fields, the path in which the lightning conductor is in the way isn't necessarily the most preferred path for the strike to happen. So the nearby places can get hit too, as demonstrated in these images.