Construction has started for two affordable housing complexes rising on Transbay Block 2 in East Cut, San Francisco. While site work has been active since the start of this year, its official groundbreaking ceremony was held late last month. Once complete, the block will add 335 new apartments in the high-rise neighborhood by Rincon Hill.

The taller complex will be Transbay 2 East, a 17-story family housing project led by Mercy Housing. The complex will offer 183 units affordable to households earning between 20-80% of the area’s median income. Kennerly Architecture is responsible for the design.

Transbay Block 2 West is being developed by the Chinatown Community Development Center. The nine-story structure will create 151 units of affordable housing for seniors. The design team includes Mithun and Kerman Morris Architects.

Transbay Block 2 East (left) and West (right) aerial perspective, rendering by Mithun

Transbay Block 2 East seen from Main Street and Clementina Street, rendering by Kennerly Architecture & Planning

Both structures will have a distinct architectural treatment, though the planning documents write that “the two buildings are a complementary pair, sharing a unifying low-rise townhouse massing fronting the park and a common masonry material sensibility establishes the block as its own precinct in contrast with the glassy towers across Folsom Street.” Facade materials will include pre-cast panels of varied textures, metal mullions and spandrels, curtainwall glass, and concrete accents. Wood accents will add some naturalistic materials along the street level.

The affordable housing block will be unified with an approachable landscaping scheme designed by Plural. Carved between the two buildings, a pedestrian mew will connect pedestrians from Folsom Street to the future Transbay Block 3 Park. The mews will pass by a central courtyard and secured childcare open space.

Transbay Block 2 East aerial view over the proposed park, rendering by Kennerly Architecture & Planning

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Transbay Block 2 image from Beale Street, image by Andrew Campbell Nelson

Transbay Block 2 seen from the new park, rendering by Kennerly Architecture & Planning

The 0.98-acre construction site occupies a third of the former Transbay Bus Terminal. Now, the site is a community space dubbed the Crossing at East Cut. Block 2 is currently occupied by a community room, surface parking, a children’s play area, and a dog run.

Across from the Block 3 Park, Hines has originally pursued plans for a 47-story residential tower. The tower would have created 681 apartments, of which nearly three hundred would have been priced below market-rate. However, last week, Patrick Hoge reported for the San Francisco Examiner that Hines had filed to make a payment to the Office fo Community Investment and Infrastructure, thus losing their exclusive option for the development.

Transbay Block 2 3 and 4 site map

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Similarly, Hines recently missed a $5 million payment to the city for failing to start work on Parcel F, the 61-story mixed-use skyscraper on Howard Street. Hines secured a loan extension from JP Morgan Chase Bank and United Overseas Bank in early July last year for construction at Parcel F, only to list the property for sale by the end of the month. Salesforce had signed an agreement in 2018 to be the anchor tenant of the planned skyscraper, but backed out of the agreement in the fall of 2020.

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Denver lacks a comprehensive program to assess potentially disastrous cybersecurity risks, City Auditor Tim O’Brien said in a new report.

The city’s current approach can best be described as “informal,” O’Brien said, particularly when it comes to oversight of independent city agencies or cultural facilities — like the Denver Art Museum and Denver Zoo — that operate on subnetworks tied into the city’s broader system.

O’Brien cataloged his office’s findings in an audit report released Thursday.

The report is the product of a review of city data, processes and planning efforts over two years — from Jan. 1, 2022, through Dec. 31, 2023.

The audit team found that city staff did not consistently complete quarterly mandatory cybersecurity training. The city also lacks a specific training regime for employees responsible for citywide information technology risk management.

O’Brien is urging Denver Technology Services — the city department tasked with overseeing and managing all physical and virtual technology that touches the city’s network — to overhaul its approach and create clear guidelines for how every wing of city government handles data and technology risks.

“Through awareness of cybersecurity risks and clear expectation-setting for appropriate use of technology, the city can trust its employees to do their part in protecting data and information,” O’Brien said in a statement.

The auditor’s office recommended seven steps that Technology Services should take to remedy Denver’s shortcomings.

Those include:

• Developing a citywide risk assessment process
• Developing risk management training
• Creating information-exchange agreements that would require independent agencies and facilities to share information about high-level technology risks with the department

Sumana Nallapati, Denver’s chief information officer, accepted all seven recommendations in a response letter sent to the auditor’s office on June 7. Mayor Mike Johnston hired her in September.

Many facets of what O’Brien recommends are already underway, Nallapati wrote in her response letter.

“(Technology Services) intends to create a robust and holistic organizational risk management structure identifying roles, responsibilities, documentation, risk assumption, identification of training for necessary roles and escalation processes associated to technical risk,” Nallapati wrote in part.

Her letter acknowledged the administration’s limited power to influence independent city agencies. While Technology Services accepted the recommendation to pursue information exchange agreements, Nallapati wrote that her department plans to reach out to independent agencies to see whether they would be willing to sign memorandums of understanding — or MOUs — focused on risk assessment.

“(Technology Services) cannot commit to a completion date for any such efforts, or that a successful MOU will ever be reached,” she wrote.

The audit report cites officials with Denver County Court as specifically asserting that they have the legal authority to operate independently as the judicial branch of city government. Court officials argue that they should not be required to formally communicate potential cyber security risks to Technology Services, the report says.

“But this assertion of independence with limited collaboration undermines the greater good of protecting the city from costly and damaging cyberattacks…” the audit team wrote.

Denver’s approach leaves the city more vulnerable to equipment failures, service disruptions and cyberattacks, the auditor’s office found. Those risk factors could cost Denver millions of dollars per day if any of them were ever to lead to full city network failure, according to the report.

In a statement to The Denver Post, Nallapati said her department is “committed to working across the city enterprise on continuous improvement of technology risk management strategies.”

Colorado has seen its share of high-profile cyberattacks in recent years.

In 2018, a ransomware attack temporarily knocked the Colorado Department of Transportation’s back-end operations offline. It cost the state between $1 million and $1.5 million just to bring the agency’s functionality back to 80% of normal in the months that followed.

Earlier this year, a cyberattack hobbled the Office of the Colorado State Public Defender and delayed hundreds of court hearings. The agency acknowledged that personal data including clients’ Social Security numbers may have been compromised during that episode.

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We think of persistent people as heroic individuals achieving great things in the face of adversity. But the untold story is: People don’t persist alone. They have families, friends, and whole communities fueling their determination.

I’ve been persisting — with the help of others — since childhood. I was born into a large family in Philadelphia. My dad realized I needed a different environment to thrive, so he unselfishly sent 10-year-old me to live with my aunt and uncle in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania. My aunt was a housekeeper but was determined to do more with her intellect and empathy. Though I was first in my family to graduate from college, she modeled persistence by graduating from college at age 53 to become a family therapist.

I excelled at school but life was challenging. Navigating the two worlds I lived in — Black city life with my family in Philadelphia and the almost entirely white world of the Poconos — required code switching to the point of exhaustion. I was also 6 feet tall, so I stuck out even more. I was tempted to draw inward but my drama teacher urged me: “Brenda, take up all of your space!”

My support structures grew through college, a career in teaching, and graduate school. But even as an accomplished educator, I needed community to persist. When I learned about the opportunity to lead Seattle Girls’ School, my excitement was eclipsed by self-doubt. Thankfully, I was mentored by the only Black, female head of school in Seattle at the time. She encouraged me to pursue my dream job.

Persistence is difficult and leadership can be isolating. In Seattle, finding a community of other Black female leaders has not been easy. This led me to proactively seek out and build my own network to fuel my leadership. In my efforts to find “my people,” I discovered that Seattleites are collaborative and welcoming of new people and ideas even if they need a little encouragement to say “hello” to a stranger.

At Seattle Girls’ School, we’ve created a community that nurtures persistence. It’s thrilling to see young people discovering their strengths and exploring different ways to lead. When I think about how Seattleites could better nurture persistence, I reflect on two important lessons we teach. First, practice radical acceptance of yourself and others. Teaching middle schoolers to accept themselves during adolescence sets the groundwork for acceptance at all stages of life — of ourselves and others. This radical acceptance is critical for women as our roles, lives, and bodies change as we age. Go ahead, take up your space! Second, borrow confidence from your community when you don’t have enough of your own. Watching kids vulnerably and courageously support each other in times of struggle and doubt can inspire all of us to do the same for the people in our lives. I believe persistence and progress are possible for anyone surrounded by a strong community. And if you can’t find the community you need, create it. Seattle is certainly a place where you can do just that.