FBI, DOJ Headquarters May Be Sold Off As Part Of Government Property Purge

The headquarters of the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation may be sold off as part of a massive purge of ‘nonessential’ government properties.

According to a website for the General Services Administration – the agency which manages the government’s office space, a listing of “buildings and facilities that are not core to government operations” now includes the DOJ and FBI headquarters, along with the federal courthouse in Los Angeles, according to The Independent.

Other buildings on the list include the Office of Personnel Management’s Theodore Roosevelt Building HQ, the building used to house offices of the United States Trade Representative, the headquarters of the American Red Cross, and the Old Post Office building, according to the report.

The GSA has also designated its own headquarters – along with the headquarters of the Department of Labor, the Department of Veteran’s Affairs, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Energy, the Department of Agriculture, and the Department of Transportation as unnecessary and potentially for sale, the report continues.

Outside of Washington, GSA has also marked for potential sale the headquarters of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Social Security Administration in Woodlawn, Maryland, the headquarters of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in Rockville, Maryland, and buildings used by the Food and Drug Administration in nearby Silver Spring, Maryland.

The Trump administration also wants to dispose of the John F Kennedy Federal Building and the Thomas P O’Neill Federal Building, both located in Boston, and the Sam Nunn Atlanta Federal Center in Georgia, the largest single federal building in the southeast which currently houses the Federal Railroad Administration. Federal courthouses in Florida, Georgia, and Indiana would also be up for sale under the GSA proposal. -Independent

The sales would mean that the vast majority of cabinet departments and other agencies would lose their headquarters buildings, in what the GSA says could potentially save more than $430 million in annual operating costs.

In a statement posted to its website, the GSA said that its Public Buildings Service was behind the plan to sell off most of the cabinet department headquarters buildings.

“Decades of funding deficiencies have resulted in many of these buildings becoming functionally obsolete and unsuitable for use by our federal workforce. We can no longer hope that funding will emerge to resolve these longstanding issues. GSA’s decisive action to dispose of non-core assets leverages the private sector, drives improvements for our agency customers, and best serves local communities,” reads the statement, which adds that the Public Buildings Service was exploring “creative solutions, including sale-lease backs, ground leases and other forms of public/private partnerships to drive the full optimization of our space while delivering our federal employees the high quality work environments they need to fulfill their missions.”