Trump administration releases list of hundreds of federal buildings
targeted for potential sale
[March 05, 2025]
By JILL COLVIN and MICHAEL R. SISAK
NEW YORK (AP) — The Trump administration on Tuesday published a list of
more than 440 federal properties it has identified to close or sell,
including the FBI headquarters and the main Department of Justice
building, after deeming them “not core to government operations."
Hours later, however, the administration issued a revised list with only
320 entries — none in Washington, D.C. The General Services
Administration, which published the list, did not immediately respond to
questions about the change and why so many properties had been removed.
The initial list had included some of the country’s most recognizable
buildings, along with courthouses, offices and even parking garage and
spanned nearly every state. In Washington, D.C., it included the J.
Edgar Hoover Building, which serves as FBI headquarters, the Robert F.
Kennedy Department of Justice Building, the Old Post Office building,
where President Donald Trump once ran a hotel, and the American Red
Cross headquarters. The headquarters of numerous agencies, including
Department of Labor and the Department of Housing and Urban Development,
were listed as well.
Elsewhere in the country, the administration targeted the enormous Major
General Emmett J. Bean Federal Center in Indiana, the Sam Nunn Atlanta
Federal Center, the Speaker Nancy Pelosi Federal Building in San
Francisco and the U.S. mission to the United Nations in New York.
Roughly 80% of the country's 2.4 million federal workers are based
outside of metropolitan Washington, D.C.
“We are identifying buildings and facilities that are not core to
government operations, or non-core properties for disposal,” the GSA
said of the list of 443 properties. Selling the properties “ensures that
taxpayer dollars are no longer spent on vacant or underutilized federal
space,” it said, and “helps eliminate costly maintenance and allows us
to reinvest in high-quality work environments that support agency
missions.”
The designations are part of Trump and billionaire Elon Musk's
unprecedented effort to slash the size of the federal workforce and
shrink government spending. Selling the designated buildings could save
the federal government hundreds of millions of dollars, they claim,
while also dramatically reshaping how major Cabinet agencies funded by
Congress operate. The Trump administration has also demanded that
federal workers report to the office every day.
Several of the buildings on the initial chopping block house agencies
that Trump has long criticized and targeted, notably the FBI and Justice
Department. The FBI and HUD headquarters are also prime examples of the
brutalist architectural style that Trump has tried for years to
eliminate, preferring traditional, neo-classical architecture instead.
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The Martin Luther King Jr., Federal Building is seen on Tuesday,
March 4, 2025, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)
Eliminating federal office space has been a top priority of the new
administration. Last month, GSA regional managers received a message
from the agency’s Washington headquarters ordering them to begin
terminating leases on all of the roughly 7,500 federal offices
nationwide.
In a follow-up meeting, GSA regional managers were told that their
goal is to terminate as many as 300 leases per day, according to the
employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of
retaliation.
Musk's Department of Government Efficiency has listed scores of
canceled office leases on DOGE's official website, raising questions
around the country about what will happen to services provided from
those offices.
Among the properties on the list released Tuesday are a large
federal building and courthouse in Los Angeles; a federal building
in Oklahoma City that replaced one destroyed in a 1995 bombing; an
IRS computing center in West Virginia and IRS service centers in
Ogden, Utah; Memphis, Tennessee; Atlanta; Austin, Texas; Andover,
Massachusetts; and Holtsville, New York.
The administration is also seeking to offload federal buildings
bearing the names of civil rights icons Martin Luther King Jr. in
Atlanta and Rosa Parks in Detroit, and the Montgomery, Alabama bus
station that was pivotal in the civil rights movement and now serves
as the Freedom Rides Museum.
In a statement, the GSA’s Public Buildings Service said the bulk of
properties it has classified as unnecessary are office spaces.
“Decades of funding deficiencies have resulted in many of these
buildings becoming functionally obsolete and unsuitable for use by
our federal workforce,” they wrote.
They said GSA will consider the buildings’ futures “in an orderly
fashion to ensure taxpayers no longer pay for empty and
underutilized federal office space, or the significant maintenance
costs associated with long-term building ownership — potentially
saving more than $430 million in annual operating costs.”
The 443 buildings, which are currently owned and maintained by GSA,
span almost 80 million rentable square feet, the agency says.
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