Public Buildings Reform Board recommends axing 11 government properties

An independent federal watchdog with a mandate to trim the government of underused properties has proposed 11 sites worth $5.4 billion in the Washington metro area and seven other cities for disposal, including the massive headquarters of the Energy Department.

The list released Thursday is heavy on agencies’ headquarters in Washington, which saw record-low use during the pandemic and where employees have resisted return-to-work orders, said David L. Winstead, a member of the Public Buildings Reform Board. The board estimates that selling, consolidating or leasing the properties would save taxpayers $52 million a year in operating costs.

“Candidly, it’s inexcusable,” said Mr. Winstead, a commercial real estate attorney who served as the General Services Administration’s (GSA) public buildings commissioner from 2005 to 2009. “The taxpayers are paying a fortune to maintain federal buildings.”

The other D.C. properties suggested for disposition include the homes of the Voice of America, which the Trump administration has gutted in budget cuts, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The list also names the home of the Agriculture Department’s Animal and Plant Inspection Service in the D.C. suburb of Riverdale, Maryland, which the federal government built in 1994 and previously flagged in December as “no longer needed.”

Elsewhere, the list calls on the White House to prune the Brickell Plaza Building in Miami, the Captain J.F. Williams Coast Guard Building in Boston, the Estes Kefauver Federal Building and Annex in Nashville, the LaBranch Federal Building in Houston, the Peachtree Summit Federal Building in Atlanta and the Lipinski Federal Building in Chicago.

The board also lists a leased Department of Agriculture space in Albuquerque, New Mexico, noting that the agency plans to consolidate it. 

According to the report, disposing of the 11 properties would reduce the federal government’s real estate footprint by over 7 million square feet. The federal government owns over 359 million square feet nationwide.

“By reducing the federal footprint, we can save U.S. taxpayers billions of dollars in day-to-day operations and maintenance costs, enable federal employees to work in safer, modernized workspaces, and return underused properties to the local tax base to be repurposed to meet each community’s most pressing needs,” said Talmage Hocker, PBRB acting chairman. 

The PBRB, formed under the Obama administration, has the power to make recommendations to the White House Office of Management and Budget, which now must decide whether to follow through on them.

The Washington Times has reached out to the White House and OMB for comment.

The GSA, the government’s chief landlord, which would carry out any disposals, said it will follow whatever the White House decides.

“The Public Buildings Reform Board is a valued partner of GSA as we look for the best way to support President Trump’s agenda of rightsizing the federal footprint, cutting costs for American taxpayers, and optimizing the space agencies need to achieve their missions,” a GSA spokesperson said.

The GSA owns or leases 90 million square feet of office space in the nation’s capital, giving it the city’s largest real-estate footprint.

Thursday’s list does not include eight properties outside the District of Columbia that GSA flagged in March for “accelerated disposition.”

In 2020, the PBRB proposed axing 12 properties, 10 of which have since been sold for a total of $193 million. A 2022 report called for disposing of 15 more properties estimated to be worth $275 million, but the Biden administration did not adopt the plan.

Mr. Winstead, a former Maryland transportation secretary under Democratic Gov. Parris Glendening, is one of four commercial real estate experts on the PBRB. The six-person board also includes two former Democratic U.S. congressmen, Nick Rahall of West Virginia and Mike Capuano of Massachusetts.

In early January, shortly before leaving office, President Biden signed a law extending the board’s mandate.

Executive Director Paul Walden, the PBRB’s lone staff member, said the authority that law granted the board gives weight to the report’s suggestions for the Trump administration to sell, consolidate or redevelop crumbling properties with years of deferred maintenance.

“There is a benefit to disposing of the buildings under our authority because it shortens the timeframe to get them to market,” Mr. Walden said. “I can assure you we’ve done the necessary analysis to make sure it’s feasible financially and from an agency housing standpoint.”

The PBRB, which is scheduled to sunset at the end of next year, reported to Congress in March 2024 that only 12% of federal headquarters space in the District was occupied in the first nine months of 2023. It made its estimates based on cell phone data, which is a standard tactic for estimating occupancy in commercial buildings.

That included an average of just eight employees working daily in the James V. Forrestal Building, which has an estimated capacity of 4,388 seats for Energy Department workers. That’s based on 200 square feet per worker.

It also included the Agriculture Department, which PBRB found only averaged 456 people working in a space that can seat 7,438 workers, and even GSA’s headquarters, which averaged 359 workers a day out of a capacity of 2,532 seats.

The PBRB occupies a single office in the building.

The United States Agency for International Development, which the Trump administration has attempted to close, had the highest daily occupancy rate in 2023, but still used only 26% of its space in the Ronald Reagan Building on Pennsylvania Avenue.

While federal agencies disputed these numbers, the PBRB reported Thursday that investigators “found data provided by federal agencies to be inaccurate and incomplete, and lacking attendance and realistic capital repair and maintenance cost data.”

The bipartisan board also warned that “current federal rules create paralysis” in making decisions about crumbling properties and called for their revision.

The report also provided a list of nearly 50 federal properties in the D.C. area and beyond for future divestment consideration.