Today, GSA’s Deputy Assistant Commissioner for Real Property Utilization and Disposal Flavio Peres updated Congress on our agency’s efforts to dispose of excess property and save taxpayer dollars. The meeting took place at the Georgetown Heating Plant in Washington, DC, which GSA will auction off this year, saving taxpayer dollars and allowing the property to be returned to productive use for the community. Auctioning this property is just one example of GSA’s ongoing efforts to better manage federal real property. The Obama Administration is moving aggressively on disposing excess properties to save money and make more efficient use of the government’s real estate assets.
Two years ago, President Obama called on his Administration to save taxpayers billions of dollars by consolidating operations and selling excess federal properties. Recently the White House announced that agencies are on track to save $8 billion in real estate costs by the end of this year. In fact, Agencies have already achieved more than $5.6 billion in savings, and GSA alone has contributed more than $317 million in savings so far.
In the past year alone, the federal government has sold or transferred 97 properties valued at $82 million. GSA recently sold the Nome Federal Building in downtown Nome, Alaska, for $1.68 million. The 27,000-square-foot, two-story building, built in 1958, will now be used as commercial office space. At the opposite end of the country in Moscow, Maine, GSA auctioned off a 1,425 acre Cold War-era radar site for around $750,000.
GSA has been working tirelessly with all federal landholding agencies to dispose of unneeded properties and since 2002 more than 3,355 federal properties have been taken off the government’s rolls. But more still needs to be done. Our mission at GSA is to make government more efficient and save money, and as the federal government’s landlord, we will continue to do that by working with agencies to identify and dispose of buildings and facilities that are no longer needed.
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