GSA wants to trade D.C. office building for construction and development services

The U.S. General Services Administration has issued a Request for Qualifications seeking developers who can provide construction and development services in exchange for the GSA Regional Office Building and Cotton Annex, both located in Southwest Washington, D.C. 

These services would be used to help GSA consolidate about 1,500 regional staff from the Regional Office Building into the GSA headquarters located at 1800 F St., NW and renovate up to three historic buildings at St. Elizabeths campus in Southeast Washington.

This action will allow GSA to leverage the value of outdated and underperforming properties to provide the government with efficient modern office space to better serve our current needs.  

Last year, the agency issued a Request for Information (RFI), soliciting innovative ideas from the development community to help the agency gather possible development scenarios that provide cost savings, space, efficiency, and modernization solutions for federal agencies located at Federal Triangle South.

“The Federal Triangle South project is an opportunity to reexamine how the federal government uses these buildings and reassess how this space fits into the surrounding community,” said GSA Administrator Dan Tangherlini. “This action will facilitate the city’s efforts to transform this precinct that is dominated by federal office buildings, into a mixed-use neighborhood that will both provide for a modern workplace for federal employees and create a vibrant, diverse, and special community of its own.”

GSA’s action supports the vision for Federal Triangle South identified by the National Capital Planning Commission’s Southwest EcoDistrict -- a sustainable community stretching from the National Mall to the Southwest Waterfront. 

The vision includes a number of federal buildings and seeks to reduce costs by overhauling these outdated and underperforming assets, developing state-of-the-art green facilities, and encouraging mixed-use and improved infrastructure. The deadline for RFQ questions is April 17, 2014. Responses are due by May 22, 2014. The RFQ is now posted on Fed Biz Opps.

Reducing the Federal Footprint & Increasing Efficiency

The Obama Administration has set aggressive goals for using federal real estate assets more efficiently, and GSA has increased its efforts to help federal agencies identify underutilized properties and move them into the disposal process.

The Federal Triangle South RFQ is part of GSA’s ongoing effort to get underperforming federal facilities, such as the Cotton Annex, off of the government's books, while creating the greatest possible value for taxpayers. It would also allow GSA to consolidate its employees in the National Capitol Region into one building, the 1800 F St. NW headquarters. This would not only cut costs and reduce energy consumption, but also maximize workplace efficiencies by bringing employees into GSA’s Total Workplace program.

(http://www.gsa.gov/portal/content/189811)