Both the House and Senate have been working on their respective versions of legislation designed to improve the process by which the federal government can dispose of unneeded and underutilized properties. This legislation has bi-partisan support…
Category: Leasing Policy
GSA Expands the CEA (but not far enough)
In response to an official request by Mayor Gray and effective May 23, 2012, GSA has expanded the District of Columbia’s Central Employment Area (CEA) to include the St. Elizabeths East Campus and the Capitol Riverfront…
Grim Outlook for Federal Tenants in Washington, DC’s Downtown
GSA’s lease selection process has made it a perpetual pioneer – pushing it to the fringe submarkets where office space is more generally available in abundant cheap supply. In the early 1990s the “fringe” was the East…
GovSpeak: “Davis-Bacon”
In the course of executing large construction transactions we often refer to “Davis-Bacon”. The Davis-Bacon Act, which was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Herbert Hoover on March 3, 1931, requires private contractors…
IBM Wins GSA Smart Building Technology Contract
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…
Northern Virginia’s Troublesome Prospectus Rent Trend
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…
OMB Freezes Inventory Growth
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…
Does GSA Ever Sign Leases Outside the CEA?
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,…
GovSpeak: The “CEA”
“CEA” is the abbreviation for “Central Employment Area”. The term has significance in federal leasing dating back to August 16, 1978, when President Jimmy Carter signed Executive Order 12072. The Executive Order included a key provision…
GovSpeak: “Scoring”
One of the primary issues federal agencies must address when leasing space is budget scoring. “Scoring” (as the term is routinely used in federal leasing) is the process by which the government determines if it is…