Trump Administration Re-Posts Nearly 1M-SF Office in D.C. to Disposal List
The property and several others returned to the list were already targeted by the Biden Administration for disposal last year
By Nick Trombola April 10, 2025 7:40 pm
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A nearly 1 million-square-foot federal office building in Washington, D.C., is back on the General Service Administration’s disposal list after being removed last month. The property, along with several others re-listed on the GSA’s website on Thursday, has had a target on its back for months.
The GSA has added seven items to its rolling list of properties that it plans to ditch. That includes 301 Seventh Street SW in Washington, D.C., dubbed the Regional Office Building. The building, which holds 845,169 rentable square feet, was at one time planned as the new FEMA headquarters.
The newest tranche of properties is the third to appear on the GSA’s “accelerated dispositions” webpage this year following a back-and-forth saga in early March. The agency, which manages the federal government’s real estate portfolio, announced on March 4 that it planned to shed 443 “non-core” assets — including the Regional Office Building — in 47 states, D.C., and Puerto Rico, together totaling some 80 million square feet and a combined $8.3 billion in recapitalization costs. Yet the agency pulled an about face one day later and removed the list to evaluate “initial input,” but promised it would be “republished in the near future.”
The GSA followed through, republishing eight of those properties to the list on March 21 and eight more on March 31. Of the seven added to the list on Thursday, at least four were already targeted for disposal by the outgoing Biden administration. That includes D.C.’s Regional Office Building, as well as Miami’s 145,490-square-foot Brickell Plaza Building, Ogden, Utah’s 173,692-square-foot James V. Hansen Federal Building, and Montpelier, Vt.’s 65,650-square-foot Montpelier Federal Building.
The GSA’s exact plans for the properties aren’t fully clear. The agency indicated in December that it could ultimately choose to sell, transfer, exchange or otherwise dispose of the buildings.
“GSA is committed to being a smart steward of taxpayer dollars by cutting unneeded space and reducing costs,” a GSA spokesperson told Commercial Observer. “The list of non-core assets is subject to change, and [GSA’s Public Buildings Service] remains fully committed to meeting the mission needs of our customer agencies and delivering world class work environments for the federal workforce as they return to office.”
The move is just the latest in the GSA’s systematic effort to downsize the federal real estate portfolio. That effort, which began over a decade ago, was kicked into high-gear by the Trump administration and the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) earlier this year. Alongside its plans to sell federally-owned buildings, create a “space-match” program to consolidate offices and drastically reduce or relocate the federal workforce, DOGE has also claimed to have cut 676 federal leases so far across the country.
DOGE’s exact role in those cuts is unclear. As is the case with the buildings reposted to the GSA’s website on Thursday, it wasn’t immediately disclosed which properties had already been slated for disposal or termination by the previous administration.
Nick Trombola can be reached at ntrombola@commercialobserver.com.
