Feds Weigh GSA HQ Sale as Agency Seeks $240M for Renovation

The General Services Administration wants a major refresh of its headquarters in the heart of Washington, D.C., even as the feds mull putting the historic complex on the auction block.

The GSA is asking Congress for $240 million to renovate two long-vacant wings at 1800 F Street NW, a seven-story, 814,000-square-foot building a block from the White House, the Washington Business Journal reported. The request revives a second-phase overhaul that stalled after the agency completed a $161 million modernization of half the building in 2013.

The upgrade would span more than 200,000 square feet and allow federal agencies to backfill and consolidate operations while shedding leased space.

The proposal, detailed in a prospectus submitted to Congress, pitches the project as essential to preserving and maximizing a “strategically located and historically significant asset,” though the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works and the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee haven’t taken it up yet.

The pitch conflicts with interest from the Public Buildings Reform Board — the congressionally authorized body charged with recommending federal properties for disposal — which is actively studying the site. Executive director Paul Walden said the board is waiting on clearer guidance from GSA before moving forward, but signaled openness to renovation if the numbers work.

“If they can justify spending a quarter billion dollars on that building … if it pencils out, then we wouldn’t have an issue with it,” he said.

The renovation plan calls for a full modernization of Wings 0 and 3, which have sat unoccupied due to deteriorating conditions, and an integration with upgraded systems from the 2013 project.

Designed in 1917 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the property is best known for its role in the Teapot Dome scandal but remains prime real estate in the federal portfolio.

Agency leadership granted much certainty about the building’s fate. The prospectus was signed in June by former GSA Administrator Stephen Ehikian and former Public Buildings Service Commissioner Michael Peters, who publicly suggested earlier this year that GSA should vacate the building and co-locate with another agency.

Peters left this summer, while Michael Rigas was named acting administrator of the GSA in July. The White House has since nominated former Cushman & Wakefield CEO Ed Forst to lead GSA, but the Senate hasn’t advanced the pick.

— Holden Walter-Warner