Two permits on one parcel
Transbay Block 2 fills a third of the ground the temporary Transbay bus terminal once used. Folsom, Beale, Howard and Main streets bound the block. The city's building records carry two new-construction permits on block 3739, lot 014.
Permit 202208019628 covers a nine-story, 109,650-square-foot building for senior households. The city filed it on 1 August 2022 and issued it on 24 October 2023. Permit 202211186863 covers a 17-story family building with 184 homes. The city filed that permit on 18 November 2022 and issued it on 17 November 2023.
Chinatown Community Development Center develops the senior building, now named Philip C. Chin Commons. Mercy Housing California develops the family building. Mithun designed the first with Kerman Morris Architects; Kennerly Architecture & Planning designed the second with Y.A. Studio. Swinerton and Rubecon hold the general contract as a joint venture on both buildings.
The senior building closed its permit in July 2026
The Department of Building Inspection signed permit 202208019628 complete on 17 July 2026. Groundbreaking for both buildings took place in May 2024, so the sign-off came 26 months later. The published finish window had opened at 2025. Mithun's project note of 7 June 2024 gave completion in 2025, SF YIMBY reported the same expectation in December 2024, and the electrical engineer of record still lists 2025 on its project page.
The family tower permit stays open
Permit 202211186863 shows a status of issued and no completion date. SF YIMBY photographed the tower at 14 floors in May 2025 and reported a finish target of summer 2026. That season has passed with the permit open.
The record carries no certificate of occupancy for either address and no opening date for the family building.
Where the 309 million dollars sits
The Mayor's office gave the combined budget for both buildings as $309 million in December 2024. The permit valuations sit lower. The senior building carries an estimated construction cost of $56,977,150 and the family building $74,471,078, or $131,448,228 for the two.
The two figures measure different things. A DBI valuation covers construction, and the $309 million covers the whole development. Financing came from California HUD, low-income housing tax credit equity from Bank of America and the Office of Community Investment and Infrastructure. In April 2024 the Board of Supervisors voted on a $115,845,218 construction loan to Mercy Housing for the family building. That loan covered 61.3 percent of an estimated $189 million budget, or nearly $1.03 million a home.
Income bands from 15 to 50 percent of median
The senior building rents 151 homes to households earning between 15 and 50 percent of area median income. SF YIMBY splits the May 2025 count as 150 affordable dwellings plus one manager's unit. Sixty of the homes serve extremely low-income residents on fixed incomes. The building mixes studios and one-bedroom apartments, and 30 homes are reserved for people who have experienced homelessness.
The family building's 184 homes serve households between 20 and 80 percent of area median income. The mix runs 16 studios, 75 one-bedrooms, 55 two-bedrooms and 37 three-bedrooms, with two homes reserved for on-site property managers. The block delivers 335 homes on 0.98 acres, about 342 homes per acre.
Three thousand square feet at grade
The senior building carries 3,000 square feet of ground-floor retail, a sixth-floor roof deck, a courtyard garden and a two-story lobby with a lofted games area at the street line. The family building adds 1,960 square feet of community-serving retail and a 6,480-square-foot childcare facility serviced by Wu Yee. The two retail bays amount to 14.8 square feet per home across 335 homes.
No tenant, rent, lease term or opening date for any of those spaces appears in the record.
The 30 by 30 arithmetic
The city set its 30 by 30 goal in the March 2024 State of the City address. The target is 30,000 new residents and students downtown by 2030, recruited through a downtown university campus and office leasing. Mayor London Breed repeated the goal at the Block 2 groundbreaking in June 2024.
At 335 homes, Block 2 supplies 1.1 percent of that target. The span from March 2024 to the end of 2030 requires about 370 residents a month, or roughly 4,400 a year.
What the file supports
The senior building delivered. Its permit closed, its 151 homes are built and its income bands are published. The family tower remains in construction under an open permit. A forecast built on this block should rest on the permit record, which dates one delivery to July 2026 and leaves the other without a published finish.