What little-known agency occupies the third-largest federal facility in the Washington, D.C., area (after the Pentagon and the Ronald Reagan building)? Last year, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), part of the Department of Defense, moved into the 2.77 million-square-foot NGA Campus East (NCE), a newly constructed complex on Fort Belvoir North Area in Springfield, Virginia. […]
A year ago when I wrote my review of the year 2012, I forecasted that in 2013 “we can be sure that our federal government will continue to clamp down on real estate spending and there will be intense pressure to reduce the inventory through greater space utilization and disposal of unneeded property”. Unfortunately, that […]
The widely used abbreviation for military construction is MILCON (also written variously as MilCon, Milcon or milcon). This typically refers to any construction, alteration, development, conversion or extension of any kind carried out with respect to…
On Friday, Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Acting Director, Jeffrey Zients, issued a memorandum effectively freezing the federal inventory of leased space. The memorandum entitled “Promoting Efficient Spending to Support Agency Operations” addressed a wide…
(Cartoon: John Darkow, Columbia Daily Tribune) With both the House and Senate out of session this week, only four days remain for lawmakers and the White House to agree on a plan to reduce the deficit in order to avert sequestration—the $85 billion in across-the-board spending cuts (this year) required by the Budget Control Act […]
Virginia Senators George Allen and John Warner, Virginia Governor Mark Warner and Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Mullen prepare to testify to the Defense Base Realignment and Closure Commission in 2005 as part of their effort to keep key Virginia military bases open. (Photo: Defense.gov) President Obama has proposed a new round of military […]
Quick, count up every U.S. intelligence organization. Did you get to 17? Probably not; but don’t worry because few people do. You knew the U.S. intelligence community is vast but did you have any idea that it included the Department of Energy and the Department of Treasury? The U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) is a coalition […]
On Federal News Radio this past Friday, Elaine Clancy, GSA’s Director of Leasing, was interviewed regarding GSA’s efforts at space reduction and consolidation and her answers underscored a broader theme growing ever louder at GSA: the…
As the winter flu season approaches, we take a look at one of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ major operating components: the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). CDC’s mission is “to collaborate to create the expertise, information, and tools that people and communities need to protect their health—through health promotion, […]
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…
Entrance to the Lenexa subsurface records facility owned by Meritex, Inc. How and where do federal agencies keep their vast amounts of records? The Code of Federal Regulations authorizes the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to establish, maintain and operate records centers for federal agencies; it also empowers it to approve records centers that […]
We have written a lot on this blog about how the GSA-leased property market is getting smaller, a trend we expect to continue easily for the next few years. Yes, one day this trend may reverse itself but there are really only a few ways that might happen, and none of them seem likely right now (and some we […]
Breakthrough House, a center established to support the recovery of individuals with mental illness, occupies a facility in Topeka, Kansas, that was formerly occupied by the Social Security Administration (Photo: Google Maps). A recent (March 21) decision by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in a 25-year-old lawsuit against the government found […]
Last week, the Lipsey Company announced the results of its annual global survey, again ranking Colliers International the second-most recognized commercial real estate brand in the world. Now in its twelfth year, the Lipsey survey combines voting and…
