The U.S. Senate is currently weighing the transfer of 3 million acres of federal land in the West to private ownership. It’s a striking figure — but it’s the quieter parallel effort unfolding in Washington, D.C., that may carry more immediate, if less dramatic, implications.
About 8 million square feet (200 acres, by comparison) of federally owned downtown office buildings are being positioned for sale, and if not carefully managed, this policy could risk doing more harm than good to the District’s fragile commercial real estate market.
On paper, the logic appears sound: reduce public liabilities, generate cash flow and provide opportunities for private-sector reinvention. But these buildings aren’t just entries on a spreadsheet —they’re physical anchors in the urban core of the nation’s capital. And treating them merely as real estate transactions may result in missed opportunities, prolonged vacancies or worse: large swaths of land-banked properties that remain unused…
