8 Leases Terminated, 2 Courthouses Targeted For Sale As DOGE Downsizing Comes To LA
Lease terminations were just the beginning.
A list posted Tuesday on the General Services Administration's website identified two federally owned courthouses in the city of Los Angeles as "non-core property" that is slated for eventual sale.
The courthouses identified for sale are the one at 312 N. Spring St., which counts U.S. Attorneys and the National Labor Relations Board among its main tenants, and the federal building at 300 N. Los Angeles St., which houses tenants including U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the IRS and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Both are on the National Register of Historic Places, according to their GSA websites. The GSA manages the federal government’s real estate portfolio.
Both properties are also in Downtown, a complicated market in which to sell office properties for the last few years. Prominent sales transactions over the last year or two have been to private buyers looking for hefty discounts.
Aleks Trifunovic, president of Lee & Associates in West Los Angeles, previously told The Real Deal that selling off the Spring Street Courthouse property would be challenging.
Downtown also dominates the list of terminated federal leases. The newly minted Department of Government Efficiency is taking credit for canceling more than 700 leases nationally, with eight of those in Los Angeles proper.
Information from the DOGE website, which tracks leases that have been terminated, and the General Services Administration indicates that just over 125K SF of federal government leases in the city of Los Angeles have been ended to date.
DOGE's website indicates that ending these leases has collectively saved the government $17M.
The largest terminations announced to date include 57K SF leased by the Securities and Exchange Commission at Oaktree Capital's 444 S. Flower in Downtown, 20K SF leased to the NLRB at 11500 W. Olympic in Sawtelle, 16K SF leased by the GSA at 350 S. Figueroa, Jamison's World Trade Center in Downtown, and 13K SF leased by the Environmental Protection Agency at Onni's 600 Wilshire Blvd., also in Downtown.
Experts have said that typically, negotiations for expiring GSA leases begin a year or even two before the expiration. Five of the eight were scheduled to expire in 2025 or 2026.
Oaktree and Jamison declined to comment. Onni didn't respond to a request for comment, and ownership of 11500 W. Olympic couldn't be reached.
Bloomberg reported on the SEC lease termination at 444 S. Flower. SEC Chief Operating Officer Ken Johnson told staff that the location, which is the agency's regional office in LA, would be closed by September.
The SEC has worked with the GSA to trim office space as leases expire to reduce the agency's costs, the SEC said in a congressional budget request for fiscal year 2025, according to Bloomberg.
