One of the more intriguing charts in GSA’s recent Congressional Justification is its “Summary of Billed Inventory” or, to put it another way, its largest tenants. It’s not a universally understood fact that GSA is the landlord for most civilian federal agencies. When private-sector landlords lease space to the federal government they are really leasing […]
Leadership changes in the 113th Congress already are having an impact on federal real estate decisions. Maryland lawmakers—led by Democratic Sen. Barbara Mikulski, who recently took over as chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee—announced last week…
As we reported last July, the National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC) has big plans for the almost 110-acre, 15-block section of Southwest Washington, D.C., that is home to the Departments of Energy, Education, and Housing and Urban Development, as well as offices of the Federal Aviation Administration, GSA and U.S. Postal Services. At its most […]
Kevin Warsh, a Federal Reserve governor during the Great Recession, noted in a Wall Street Journal op-ed earlier this year, “If you’ve seen one financial crisis, you’ve seen one financial crisis.” That is to say, all…
Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport (photo: flyreagan.com) Last week, the Trump administration revealed its proposed 2019 budget and a companion proposal, the Legislative Outline for Rebuilding Infrastructure in America. Together, these proposals describe the president’s much-anticipated infrastructure plan. The centerpiece of the plan is a $200 billion request for funds “to stimulate at least $1.5 trillion in […]
Colliers recently issued a profile of the Top 25 U.S. office markets, which observed that net absorption fell into negative territory for the first time in a decade and vacancy rates posted their sharpest increase over the same period. An example of the growing market weakness is the fact that the amount of sublease space […]
St. Elizabeths Hospital, perhaps best known as the psychiatric facility in which the poet Ezra Pound was held for thirteen years after having been convicted of treason, and where would-be presidential assassin John Hinckley has been confined since June 1982, is choice real estate. Occupying more than 180 acres of federal property with a sweeping […]
Rep. Lou Barletta (R-Pa.) held his first hearing as chairman of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure’s Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings, and Emergency Management yesterday (Wednesday, March 13). The hearing examined the proposal to…
In November 2013, I published a brief analysis looking at the cap rate trend for FBI field office sales tracked from the end of the Global Financial Collapse. FBI field offices are a good subject for this type of analysis because they are mostly build-to-suits, generally homogenous and there are enough sales of long-term (15+ year) leased […]
The Bannister Federal Complex, located at 1500 and 2000 E. Bannister Road in south Kansas City, Mo., 13 miles south of downtown, will be largely shut down within the next two years, according to a GSA…
With the recent surge in congressional activity towards infrastructure spending it is worth noting a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report released in June entitled Federal Investment, 1962 to 2018. That report provides a great overview of…
In written testimony on March 7th before the House, Dr. Dorothy Robyn, Deputy Under Secretary of Defense, Installations and Environment, confirmed that DoD has embarked upon a formal initiative to review the Department’s anti-terrorism/force protection (ATFP)…
The hall was packed on Monday, August 26, to hear energy secretary Ernest Moniz deliver his first major policy address at Columbia University’s Center for Global Energy Policy. Just three months on the job, Secretary Moniz elaborated on President Obama’s Climate Action Plan in his remarks, emphasizing energy efficiency as the most cost effective approach toward reducing […]
“Clowns to the left of me, Jokers to the right, here I am, Stuck in the middle with you.” Once you get a song in your head it’s hard to get it back out. These Stealers Wheel lyrics certainly resonated when listening to the opening of today’s congressional mark-up hearing. Of course, we don’t really regard […]
