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 […]
According to our research, the answer is very rarely. As of the December 2011 GSA lease inventory, there are a total of 339 GSA leases within the District of Columbia, totaling approximately 25.5 MSF. Of those,…
Recently, Ross Litkenhous of Altus Group invited me to participate as a guest on his CRE Insider podcast series. We covered a variety of subjects including the SWAMP Act, downsizing, GSA lease terminations and more. The conversation…
Which federal agency was formed “to engage Americans of all ages and backgrounds in service to meet community needs”? The Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) engages more than 5 million Americans in service through three major programs: Senior Corps, AmeriCorps and Learn and Serve America. Its mission is to “improve lives, strengthen communities, […]
UPDATE: We updated this article the day after first publishing it in order to tune up our stats. The new graph (above) tracks the percentage of leases that have less than 3 years of remaining lease term…
This past week I was treated to two events that provided great insight into what can be expected from the 113th Congress. The first of these was a February 26th Capitol Hill reception hosted by the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, an opportunity to meet committee members and staff, including Rep. Lou Barletta (R-Pa.), the […]
The GSA reinforced its role as a key partner in achieving President Obama’s greenhouse gas and energy efficiency goals in an announcement on June 11 in Lanham, Maryland. Agency Administrator Dan Tangherlini revealed a major Energy…
The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) leases private property at a cost of billions of dollars—$5.7 billion annually, to be precise, spread out over more than 8,000 leases. Every year, the agency claims, it saves taxpayers…
A recent bounce in GSA’s funds from Congress has modestly improved the agency’s ability to reduce the federal footprint and shift more toward owned space, as we discussed earlier this month. But the slight budget relief may be only temporary and does not resolve chronic funding problems faced by GSA and other agencies needing to […]
The federal Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) owns or operates 168 medical centers and 1,053 outpatient facilities that serve a population of 8.9 million veterans each year, ranking it among the largest healthcare providers in the…
