Federal Real Estate Head Leaving GSA Amid Leadership Shake-Up

The Trump administration over the last week has swapped out the two top officials in charge of steering the government’s 360M SF office footprint at a critical time for the portfolio.

Michael Peters is stepping down from his role as Public Buildings Service commissioner for the General Services Administration, a spokesperson for the agency confirmed to Bisnow. 

“GSA is thankful for his leadership and we wish him the best on his future endeavors,” GSA Associate Administrator for Strategic Communications Marianne Copenhaver said in an emailed statement.

She said Peters will transition back to the private sector. The agency hasn't announced who will replace Peters as PBS commissioner.

GSA acting Administrator Stephen Ehikian has also left his role, Federal News Network first reported last week and the GSA confirmed to Bisnow in an email. He was replaced by Michael Rigas, a former State Department official, and is staying on as deputy administrator for the agency.

President Donald Trump appointed Peters and Ehikian to their roles in January, just days into his second term.

The two were in the top positions to spearhead the administration’s push to downsize the government's leased and owned space. That effort had been unfolding for years before, but the Trump administration accelerated it.

At a Public Buildings Reform Board meeting a week into his role, Peters said the forthcoming cuts “could be up to a 50% reduction” of the government's portfolio.

The effort ramped up in the following months. 

At the beginning of March, the GSA released a list of 443 federally owned properties totaling nearly 80M SF that it was targeting for disposition, including seven D.C. headquarters buildings that each totaled more than 1M SF. 

It took down that list less than 24 hours later and had been updating the page with a handful of properties each week that it says are slated for “accelerated disposition,” though the last update was in May.

Among the properties that it has added back is the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s 1.1M SF Robert C. Weaver Federal Building. The agency has since announced that the 2,700 HUD workers will be moving from that building to a leased building in Alexandria. 

Earlier this month, the GSA announced plans to dispose of the FBI’s 2.8M SF headquarters on Pennsylvania Avenue and move employees a few blocks away to the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center.

The agency hasn't yet said what it will do with the Department of Agriculture's 2.2M SF headquarters building on Independence Avenue after the USDA announced last week that it plans to vacate and hand it over to the GSA.

On the leasing front, the Department of Government Efficiency slashed hundreds of leases this spring — at its peak totaling more than 9M SF — before walking back more than half of them, according to JLL’s tracking platform. It is unclear what the GSA’s role has been in that effort.

Brokers and landlords who interact with the GSA told Bisnow in March that the government's leasing operation was chaotic and uncommunicative, which was causing confusion and panic among the industry.

Since Trump took office, nearly 1,000 GSA employees have been fired, according to CNN's federal workforce tracker.