In honor of the Mars rover Curiosity’s successful landing on the Red Planet early yesterday morning (Monday, August 6), we’ve decided to take a look at the agency behind that impressive feat: the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Its vision—“to reach for new heights and reveal the unknown so that what we do and […]

If you are a GSA leased property owner, have you considered that now may be an excellent time to sell? Among other trends, we are noticing that GSA investors are pursuing acquisitions of shorter lease term deals with increasing frequency where the renewal story is strong. As expected, pricing for these shorter lease term deals […]

If you begin discussing government facilities security, sooner or later “standoff” will enter the conversation. Standoff, sometimes used synonymously with “setback”, is the term used to describe the distance between a building and the perimeter of its site. In high security facilities such as FBI field offices it is typical to require 100 feet of […]

Ward Memorial Hall, located on the grounds of the Milwaukee Soldiers Home complex, was dedicated in 1881 by William Tecumseh Sherman. Today it stands vacant and in disrepair. A century and a half ago, after the Civil War had ended, the federal government began an ambitious program of building national hospitals for wounded veterans—a few […]

NCPC rendering of Southwest Ecodistrict plan (source: ncpc.gov) The National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC) has big plans for the smallest of the District of Columbia’s four quadrants. A preliminary plan released last week (July 12) for a 110-acre, 15-block section of Southwest Washington that is home to the Departments of Energy, Education, and Housing and Urban […]

The US Army Futures Command will initially occupy the recently-constructed University of Texas HQ building at 210 W 7th Street in downtown Austin (Photo: CoStar). If knowledge is power, as the English scientist and politician Sir Francis Bacon is credited with saying, then knowing how and when to use force can be thought of as […]

Senator Barbara Boxer: “The Party’s Over” Two Senate committees got their chance today to question GSA leaders after two days of House hearings into the agency. Both the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee—which met this morning—and  the Appropriations Committee’s Financial Services and General Government Subcommittee—which  controls the GSA budget, and met in the afternoon—called […]

On January 20, 2015, by a vote of 94 to 5, the U.S. Senate authorized the Environmental Protection Agency to create a voluntary “Tenant Star” program whose mission is, with the use of market incentives and other considerations, to encourage tenants of leased space to work with the owners to design, build, and maintain new […]

The sprawling Food and Drug Administration (FDA) campus in Silver Spring, Maryland, will soon be welcoming another major regulatory component of the agency: the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER). Beginning about May 1, moving vans will collect CBER employees from various leased suburban Maryland locations and deliver them to the federally owned 130-acre Federal […]

This past week, Colliers published its “Top Office Metros Snapshot” focused on ten of the nation’s most notable office markets. All of these are among the top 20 metros occupied by GSA so we take an interest in this report. The results indicate improvement (from the investor’s viewpoint) in most markets, but there are laggards, […]

“CEA” is the abbreviation for “Central Employment Area”.  The term has significance in federal leasing dating back to August 16, 1978, when President Jimmy Carter signed Executive Order 12072.  The Executive Order included a key provision that has greatly impacted the location of federal offices ever since: Except where such selection is otherwise prohibited, the […]

Recently completed Bakersfield Federal Courthouse (Photo: KBAK/KBFX) The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) signed by President Obama in 2009 called for major new construction and the energy-efficient modernization of federal office buildings, courthouses and land ports across the country. This is the fourth piece in a series in which we examine some of the […]

Senior realty officers from GSA and six federal agencies face congressional members to address leasing challenges. On July 30th the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee hosted a subcommittee hearing entitled: “GSA Tenant Agencies: Challenges and Opportunities in Reducing Costs of Leased Space”. The assembled witnesses included Norman Dong, the Commissioner of GSA’s Public Buildings Service, […]

Which federal agency is both a military force and a law enforcement agency? The U.S. Coast Guard (USCG), one of the nation’s five armed forces and the only military organization within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), “is simultaneously and at all times a military force and federal law enforcement agency dedicated to safety, security, […]