Trump Wants Federal Agencies to Disregard Downtown Office Hubs
The previous orders, signed by the Carter and Clinton administrations, directed agencies to prioritize central business districts and historic properties for federal facilities
By Nick Trombola April 17, 2025 1:55 pm
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The days of federal agencies favoring office buildings in downtown urban centers will soon come to an end — that is, if the Trump Administration has anything to say about it.
President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed an executive order directing federal agencies to disregard orders from the Carter and Clinton administrations guiding agencies to prioritize central business districts and historic properties when searching for new offices and facilities. Bloomberg first reported the news.
Trump’s order, “Restoring Common Sense to Federal Office Management,” claims that the directives of the prior administrations, signed in 1978 and 1996, respectively, failed to “adequately prioritize efficient and effective government service.” The orders were intended to support downtown areas struggling with office vacancies as companies moved to more suburban locations.
“Revoking these orders will restore common sense to federal office space management by freeing agencies to select cost-effective facilities and focus on successfully carrying out their missions for American taxpayers,” the order said.
Trump’s Tuesday order is just the latest move by his administration to remake the federal government’s real estate portfolio in its own image. Monday was the deadline for agencies to submit relocation proposals for their offices outside of Washington, D.C., and the DMV to “less-costly parts of the country,” per a February memo from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and Office of Personnel Management (OPM).
The General Services Administration, meanwhile, started reposting federal buildings to its online disposal list, about a month after pulling the original 443-item list in mid-March to evaluate “initial input.” The new list includes the Regional Office Building, a nearly 1 million-square-foot complex in D.C.’s Southwest quadrant.
Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), for its part, has also been busy with cost-cutting efforts. DOGE has so far claimed to have terminated 653 federal leases, per its sporadically updated website as of Thursday, for an estimated $350 million in savings.
Nick Trombola can be reached at ntrombola@commercialobserver.com.
