Trump Administration to Ditch 2M-SF Agriculture South Building in D.C.

The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) and Department of Agriculture (USDA) are formally unloading the mostly empty Agriculture South building in Washington, D.C. — the latest target of the GSA’s effort to rightsize the government’s real estate portfolio. 

The 2 million-square-foot building at 1400 Independence Avenue SW, just south of the National Mall, comprises part of the USDA’s headquarters complex. Yet the sprawling office is currently more than 85 percent vacant, and has a deferred maintenance backlog of $1.6 billion, according to the GSA.

How the GSA plans to dispose of the complex, and to whom, was not immediately clear. “Disposal” could mean that the GSA transfers the property to another agency, donates it to the local D.C. government or a nonprofit, sells it via auction, demolishes it, or redevelops it. 

“President Trump made clear his second term would include relocating the sprawling federal bureaucracy to locations outside the [DMV],” Stephen Vaden, the USDA’s deputy secretary, said in a statement. “[Wednesday]’s announcement cements the beginning of USDA’s larger reorganization, ensuring this department delivers on its mission to the American people within the bounds of its financial resources.”

The GSA has mulled what to do with the largely empty complex for the better part of a year, after the agency posted (and quickly removed) a list of 400 federal properties slated for disposition last March that included the Agriculture South building. Much of the property has undergone renovations in recent years, and it shares a utility system with the neighboring Whitten Building. The USDA last July also announced a plan to move 2,500 workers out of the DMV.

Ultimately, however, the building proved too vacant and too expensive to maintain. The GSA added the complex back to its “accelerated dispositions” website on Wednesday. 

“This is a long overdue move to protect American taxpayer dollars from being wasted on expensive real estate inside the Washington, D.C., area, when our government should be closer to the farmers and ranchers we serve,” USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins added in a statement. “It is simply unacceptable to put these costs on the taxpayer.”

The Trump administration’s federal downsizing effort lost much steam after Elon Musk’s exit from the Department of Government Efficiency last May.

In July, the GSA announced that the Department of Housing and Urban Development would relocate to the National Science Foundation’s building in Alexandria, Va., and the FBI announced it was moving its headquarters from the J. Edgar Hoover Building to the Reagan Building just down the street, but the government’s real estate manager has been largely quiet since then. The GSA’s February additions of the Agriculture South building, as well as the Hart-Dole-Inouye Federal Center in Battle Creek, Mich., have been the only new entries to its accelerated dispositions list since May.

Nick Trombola can be reached at ntrombola@commercialobserver.com.