Transbay Transit Center has sparked a flurry of new investment opportunities around it for companies like Jay Paul, Hines, and Boston Properties. (Above, Chicago's Golub broke ground on its first S.F. project, Block 6, earlier this year.) Now we know a bit more about two priceless S.F. parcels going out to bid: a future office site known as Parcel F and Block 4, allocated for over 700 residential units. The problem is both properties won't be available for development until 2018, Transbay Joint Powers Authority exec director Maria Ayerdi-Kaplan tells us. That's because she needs Parcel F for staging of construction of bus ramps and the Block 4 site for the temporary bus site; Transbay Transit Center is on track for a late 2017 delivery.

However, she discloses an interesting nugget in regards to potentially speeding up the process of selling of the parcels: "If someone came to me and said we'd give you a ton of money for them, we'd consider it—as long as the developer understood they could not build on the sites until we no longer needed them." (So throw some cash on scales, folks, 2,000 pounds is a ton.) She tells us Transbay is now in the midst of an ENA (exclusive negotiating agreement) for the Block 8 residential tower site, which garnered interest from a parade of parties this year. She's getting ready to start putting up structural steel in the late summer or early fall at Transbay Transit Center (pictured). You are starting to see the Grand Central of the West come up now, she says. On Monday we'll have more from our interview with Maria, who's a panelist on our June 4 Future of SoMa event.