Public Buildings Reform Board to Fast-Track Sales of Energy Department, Voice of America Headquarters

Sean Salai | June 1, 2025

(The Washington Times) — The Trump White House has approved a bipartisan agency’s recommendation to ax 11 government buildings worth $5.4 billion in the Washington area and seven other cities, including the massive Energy Department headquarters.

The Office of Management and Budget confirmed Friday that it will proceed with the expedited plan proposed by the Public Buildings Reform Board, an independent federal watchdog established under the Obama administration to eliminate underused government properties.

The move authorizes the General Services Administration, the government’s chief landlord, to proceed with the board’s May 22 recommendations for building sales and consolidations. The list is heavy on D.C. agency headquarters that saw record-low use during the coronavirus pandemic and where employees have resisted return-to-work orders.

“OMB fully supports increasing the effectiveness and cost efficiency of the federal real property portfolio, and the disposition of these properties furthers that goal,” said OMB Director Russell T. Vought. “Therefore, I am approving the board’s recommendation with direction to the administrator of GSA to effectuate the sales in a manner that meets statutory requirements.”

The other D.C. properties to be divested include the home of the Voice of America, which the Trump administration has gutted in budget cuts, and the vacant former headquarters of the Department of Homeland Security. The list also names the home base of the Agriculture Department’s Animal and Plant Inspection Service in the Washington suburb of Riverdale, Maryland, which the federal government built in 1994 and flagged in December as “no longer needed.”

Elsewhere, the GSA will 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, Tennessee, the LaBranch Federal Building in Houston, the Peachtree Summit Federal Building in Atlanta and the Lipinski Federal Building in Chicago.

The GSA also will consolidate a leased Department of Agriculture space in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

GSA officials worked with the reform board to develop the list of buildings. They have pledged to carry out whatever disposals the Trump administration directs.

Reform board Executive Director Paul Walden, the board’s lone staff member, said his agency is now evaluating another 58 federal buildings occupying 25.9 million square feet for disposal in a report due by December 2026. They include the D.C. headquarters of the Labor Department, FBI and Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The board estimates that the crumbling buildings cost taxpayers $205 million annually and have $4.3 billion in deferred maintenance.

“We’re very excited that OMB approved disposing of 11 properties because it’s going to have a big effect,” Mr. Walden said in a Friday morning call. “We’re just now starting on the research for our next round of cuts, which is due by December 2026 and will be our grand finale.”

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.

While most of the 11 buildings approved for disposal were previously flagged for elimination, the PBRB’s statutory authority allows the Trump administration to get them to market faster now that OMB has adopted the recommendations.

According to the reform board, disposing of the 11 properties will reduce the federal government’s real estate footprint by more than 7 million square feet. The federal government owns more than 359 million square feet nationwide.

In 2020, the PBRB proposed axing 12 properties, 10 of which have since been sold for $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.

The six-member reform board includes David Winstead, a former Maryland transportation secretary under Democratic Gov. Parris Glendening, as one of four commercial real estate experts. It also includes two former Democratic U.S. congressmen, Nick Rahall of West Virginia and Mike Capuano of Massachusetts.

President Biden in early January signed a law extending the board’s mandate.

The board, which is scheduled to end at the end of next year, reported to Congress in March 2024 that 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, a standard tactic for estimating occupancy in commercial buildings.

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

It also included the Agriculture Department, which the board found 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 board occupies one office in the building.

The U.S. 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 those numbers, the PBRB reported on May 22 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.

Mr. Vought said he looks forward to approving the board’s next round of recommendations.

“OMB encourages the disposition of the identified assets in a manner that maximizes the return to the taxpayer,” he said Friday. “Our shared goal is to effectuate this round of recommendations in a timely manner, and to identify a robust third round of recommendations that consolidates and disposes of property under the Federal Assets Sale and Transfer Act.”