Energy Department headquarters among 11 properties board urges Trump administration to sell
Headquarters for the Energy Department, Voice for America and parts of the Agriculture Department are among the latest federal buildings that a small, independent agency is urging the Trump administration to sell.
The Public Buildings Reform Board is recommending that the General Services Administration put the Energy Department’s James Forrestal Building, VOA’s Wilbur Cohen federal building and nine other federal properties up for sale or disposal.
The board is also looking to shutter the headquarters of the Agriculture Department’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), the Coast Guard’s New England headquarters in Boston, and an office building for federal law enforcement personnel in Houston.
This is the board’s third round of disposal recommendations. GSA previously sold properties the board recommended for disposal on its 2019 “high-value asset” list. The Biden administration, however, rejected the board’s second round of recommendations it submitted in January 2021.
Trump administration officials are paying close attention to the board’s recommendations as part of their plans to shrink the federal workforce and cut the government’s real estate footprint in half. The federal government is the nation’s largest owner of real estate.
Headquarters for the Labor Department, GSA, the Agriculture Department, the FBI, the Office of Personnel Management, the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Federal Aviation Administration are listed as “candidates for analysis” for the board’s next round of disposal recommendations.
HUD announced in April that it plans to sell its downtown headquarters building. Even with HUD employees returning to the office full-time, GSA said the department’s Brutalist headquarters is only at half its total occupancy. That occupancy level falls short of a 60% minimum standard former President Joe Biden signed into law before leaving office.
All of the PBRB’s disposal recommendations, except for the Energy Department’s headquarters, already appear on GSA’s list of properties “identified for accelerated dispositions.”
GSA added the headquarters of more than a dozen agencies — including its own — to a list of 440 “non-core” properties in March, but quickly deleted the list. A new version of that list now includes 43 properties.
The board was created under the 2016 Federal Assets Sale and Transfer Act (FASTA) to help GSA identify properties that should fast-track through an often lengthy sale and disposal process.
Board member Dan Mathews, a former commissioner of GSA’s Public Buildings Service under the first Trump administration, said GSA can sell properties faster under the FASTA legislation.
“This is the fastest way to bring a property to disposal,” Mathews said. “This kind of jumps over all of those processes that are otherwise required, and it can go straight to sale.”
Mathews said the PBRB has been in contact with D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser’s office about its plans to shutter the Forrestal Building.
“The Forrestal Building’s probably been studied more than any other federal property ever, anywhere. There’s really broad-based support for opening up that corridor down to connect the mall and the Wharf,” said Mathews. “I think they’re quite excited about it and the opportunity.”
David Winstead, a former PBS commissioner under the George W. Bush administration, said employees working in these buildings would eventually move to nearby office space.
“We are not moving federal employees. We’re basically relocating them in the same general market,” Winstead said.
The Office of Management and Budget, starting this week, is requiring agencies to collect data on how many employees are showing up to the office each day to ensure buildings are meeting a minimum 60% average occupancy.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order on his first day in office requiring federal employees to return to the office full time.
Winstead said the board expects federal buildings will see higher utilization rates now that “more and more employees are coming back to offices.”
PBRB wrote in its report that data on underutilized federal building space is “inadequate” and allows agencies to “obfuscate inefficiencies.” Its report also states that agencies have been uncooperative when asked to provide attendance data.
“Several agency officials reported to the Board that their agency was unwilling to share attendance data because the data might be supplied to Congress and the public,” the report states.
Members of the board expect that the employee attendance data will determine the next round of properties it recommends selling.
“We need that data now. Mathews said. “And agencies, I think if they’re wise, they will be getting — whether it’s laptop login information, installing sensors — whatever they need to do to start collecting data, it’s going to benefit them.”
The board said selling these underutilized properties would give agencies the opportunity to “create healthier, safer and operationally supportive workspaces.
“The low utilization of large federal properties has been noted to cause Legionella outbreaks as water has stagnated in plumbing systems,” the board’s report states. “Other properties the Board studied have antiquated heating and cooling systems, out-of-date electrical systems, elevators that are continually out of service and require replacement, window deterioration, and have not undergone hazardous material abatement.”
“Most of the buildings that we’ve studied are basically not worth preserving, because of the deferred maintenance and because of a lack of utilization with them,” Winstead said.
Here’s a full list of properties the PBRB is looking to sell in its latest round of recommendations:
• 4700 River Road, Riverdale, MD
• 7th and D St S.W., 301 7th St S.W., Washington, DC
• James V. Forrestal, 1000 Independence S.W., Washington, DC
• Wilbur J. Cohen, 330 Independence S.W., Washington, DC
• Albuquerque Lease Consolidation, Albuquerque, NM
• Brickell Plaza, 900 Brickell Plaza, Miami, FL
• Captain F. Williams Coast Guard, 408 Atlantic Ave, Boston, MA
• Estes Kefauver, 801 Broadway, Nashville, TN
• La Branch, 2320 LaBranch St, Houston, TX
• Peachtree Summit, 401 W. Peachtree St, Atlanta, GA
• William O. Lipinski, 844 N. Rush St, Chicago, IL
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