“Before” and “After” Photos of the Edith Green-Wendell Wyatt Building Renovation. 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, FBI, BLM, and other agencies, was transformed over […]

The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) is the federal government’s “workplace solutions provider.” It aims to leverage its enormous buying power to reduce costs, increase efficiencies and enhance flexibility and convenience for both federal agencies and their customers.  Through its two largest offices—the Federal Acquisition Service and the Public Buildings Service (PBS)—GSA facilitates the purchase […]

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…

With over 1,000 leased facilities, often in single-tenant buildings, the Social Security Administration (SSA) is a staple of many federal investor portfolios. Like other federal agencies, however, SSA has been dutifully implementing the “Reduce the Footprint” policy pursued by the current and previous administrations. SSA reduced its total square footage by about 5% between 2012 […]

The following is a guest post written by Mark Miller, the head of Colliers’ national Energy & Sustainability team. To learn more about Colliers’ Energy and Sustainability services, click here. The Federal Government is taking aggressive steps to…

The following is a guest post written by Mark Miller, the head of Colliers’ national Energy & Sustainability team. To learn more about Colliers’ Energy and Sustainability services, click here. The Federal Government is taking aggressive steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and drive sustainability in its owned and leased real estate portfolio. Two new initiatives taken in the […]

Workplace injuries resulted in 4,383 worker deaths in 2012, the second lowest total since the census began in 1992. The leading causes, known as the “fatal four,” were falling, being struck by an object, electrocution, and…

The General Services Administration (GSA) announced on Wednesday (Feb. 15) that it will relocate about 1,000 employees from its Heartland Region headquarters at the Bannister Federal Complex—a 5.1 million-square-foot former defense plant in south Kansas City—to leased space in downtown Kansas City, Missouri (GSA’s Region 6 office manages more than 400 federally owned and leased […]

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 was fun for me and (hopefully) informative for you. You can listen to the episode here.

This week the House of Representatives passed H.R. 1734, known as the Civilian Property Realignment Act (CPRA), with voting carried by the Republican-led House, largely along party lines. The legislation describes its purpose as “To decrease the…

Since the end of 2012, GSA has been actively working to reduce the size of its leased footprint. Progress has been modest but consistent. At its December 2012 zenith, GSA leased 198.6 million square feet of space (MSF) across the United States. Since then the agency has shed almost 10.9 MSF, yielding an overall reduction of […]

“Extreme Leasing” is a periodic feature profiling the biggest, smallest, highest, oldest, newest and other extremes in the government lease inventory. The largest GSA lease in the United States can be found in Alexandria, VA.  It…

The General Services Administration (GSA) is typically referred to as the landlord for the federal government. On behalf of federal agencies it leases 191 million square feet in roughly 8,700 office, storage, lab and other types of leased locations across the United States and its territories. The map below highlights those space concentrations. It’s no […]

The House of Representatives passed a bill yesterday designed to speed up the sale of large amounts of excess federal properties. The Civilian Property Alignment Act (H.R. 1734), commonly referred to as the “Civilian BRAC” bill),…