The General Services Administration is considering a second major campus for the National Institutes of Health in Maryland.
The move would combine two major NIH space needs into one and create a secondary campus that could be greater than 500k SF, the Washington Business Journal reports. The GSA received approval from Congress back in 2014 for two separate prospectuses that would consolidate several NIH locations in Bethesda and Rockville. Earlier this month, a pre-solicitation was posted with FedBizOpps.gov for up to 539k SF in either Montgomery or Prince George’s counties.
The request is broken into two blocks—one up to 345k SF and one up to 194k SF—and restricts the search to no more than three adjacent buildings, up to three miles from a Metro station and within 660 feet of each other. By combining the two prospectuses, the GSA should be able to reduce the time and approvals needed for two separate searches.
The GSA is facing the perfect storm of millions of square feet in leases set to expire over the next five years while dealing with a mandate from the Obama Administration to freeze its office footprint. Earlier this year, the Government Accountability Office recommended the agency devise a better system for tracking expiring leases and to develop plans for space needs ahead of time. [WBJ]
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