“I like it because nothing like it has ever been done that way before.” – Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt commenting on the unique design of the planned War Department headquarters This “Sunday Edition” of our Memorial Day weekend series takes a look at the slice of U.S. history that led to the construction of the […]
When the new Department of the Interior (DOI) headquarters opened in 1936, employees enjoyed the latest in building amenities and technologies: a gymnasium, movable steel office partitions, a soda fountain, and the first air conditioning system…
Donald Trump’s campaign rallies leading into the 2016 election were energized by his pledge to “Drain the Swamp” in the Nation’s Capital. Little did rally-goers know how politics and circumstance would stand in the way of this top Trump administration goal—a complete reorganization, downsizing and dispersion of bureaucracy. The only physical manifestations of those efforts […]
Expatriat British novelist and travel writer Lawrence Durrell, writing in Reflections on a Marine Venus, described a “rare but by no means unknown affliction of spirit” that he dubbed “islomania.” “These are people,” he stated, “who…
On May 30, Portland, Oregon, celebrated the completion of a $139 million renovation of the 18-story Edith Green-Wendell Wyatt Federal Building (EGWW). First opened in 1975, the boxy, concrete-and-steel high rise, aging home to the IRS,…
Is your bathroom tissue squeezably soft? Does your soap leave your hands germ-free? Advertisers lie awake at night worrying about whether consumers are worrying sufficiently about such things. And as for the federal government—well, officials there have been worrying that suppliers and agency managers haven’t been paying quite enough attention to the environment, whence a […]
Constitution Center (photo: CoStar) As was recently reported in Real Estate Finance and Investment, MetLife is under contract to acquire Constitution Center for what could be the highest total price paid for a building in Washington, DC this year. David Nassif Associates listed the 1.4 MSF office building located at located at 400 7th Street, […]
Among federal agencies, the General Services Administration (GSA) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) score at the top of the class for green building. That’s according to the annual Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Sustainability and Energy Scorecards, released by OMB and the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) on May 31. Since […]
Near the end of his Administration, on December 16, 2016, President Barack Obama made a Republican politician very happy. Jeff Denham, first elected to Congress from California’s 19th District and reelected three times from the redrawn 10th District, had made it a central plank of his first run for the House of Representatives that the […]
Last Monday (May 21, 2012), GSA awarded IBM with a contract, worth up to $11.5 million, to develop and install advanced smart building technology systems in 50 of the federal government’s highest energy-consuming buildings. Part of GSA’s larger smart building strategy, this initiative—which will use innovative technologies to connect building management systems to a central […]
At FDA’s White Oak campus in suburban Maryland, Honeywell has been awarded Energy Savings Performance Contracts totaling $195 million. Improvements designed and implemented by Honeywell over the past several years include heating, ventilation and lighting upgrades and a more efficient central utility plant to power the 1.2 million-square-foot expansion of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research. […]
January 31 brought another announcement of a long-awaited federal relocation. Since 1993, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has been headquartered at Franklin Court, on 14th Street in Northwest, D.C., but come December, the independent agency will move to the Capitol Riverfront district. The change reflects GSA’s ongoing efforts to shrink the federal footprint, in […]
August is Tree Check Month, thanks to the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), which urges each of us to examine tree bark for signs of Asian Longhorned Beetle damage. Protecting the nation’s forests from invasive insects is just one of the responsibilities of APHIS, part of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), with […]
It’s tough to be a government landlord in Northern Virginia these days, especially if your building is tenanted by a large federal tenant where the lease size is above the prospectus threshold. The reason is that OMB has established its current cap (for FY’14 leases) to a maximum full service rent of just $39.00. What […]
