Trump Administration In Talks To Sell Old Post Office Building
Four years after Donald Trump's company sold the lease for its luxury hotel in the Old Post Office building on Pennsylvania Avenue, his administration is working to sell the property itself.
The General Services Administration is in negotiations to sell the historic building, which now houses a Waldorf Astoria hotel, as part of its efforts to shrink the government's real estate footprint, a spokesperson confirmed to Bisnow.
“Transferring this property out of Federal ownership will generate revenue, save taxpayer dollars, and help rightsize the federal real-estate portfolio,” GSA Associate Administrator for Strategic Communications Marianne Copenhaver said in a statement.
The negotiations are occurring with the merchant bank that holds the lease for the property, BDT & MSD Partners, The Washington Post reported, citing a letter from a GSA official. The long-term lease gives it the first right to buy the property.
A BDT & MSD spokesperson declined Bisnow's request for comment.
The bank took control of the lease in August 2024 at a foreclosure auction. It had lent $285M to Miami-based CGI Merchant Group for its $375M purchase of the lease rights to the building from The Trump Organization in May 2022.
After that sale, CGI brought on Hilton to manage the hotel under its Waldorf Astoria brand.
CGI defaulted on the loan after less than two years. Its inability to make its loan payments was in part due to the high purchase price, which was tens of millions of dollars more than other offers, The Wall Street Journal reported in February 2024.
The building, which sits four blocks east of the White House, was constructed in the 1890s and faced potential demolition twice before being placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973.
The building's 270-foot-high observation deck stands above most of the height-limited city and has long been open to the public to see its views across the nation's capital. But the National Park Service confirmed to the Post that it is no longer operating tours.
The Trump Organization signed a 60-year lease for the building in 2013 and transformed it into the 263-room Trump International Hotel, which opened in September 2016, two months before Trump was elected president.
It became a flashpoint of controversy during Trump's first term, as foreign governments regularly paid the president's family business for rooms and events in the hotel, which government ethics watchdogs — and the attorneys general of Maryland and D.C. — claimed violated the Constitution's emoluments clause.
The federal government has collected rent from the lease throughout the last decade, as Trump agreed to pay the government $3M a year, plus a percentage of profits with escalation clauses.
But rather than continue collecting the rent checks, the Trump administration is looking to offload the property as part of its effort to cut costs and shrink its real estate portfolio. Most of the disposition efforts thus far have targeted federal office buildings that are underutilized, such as the Department of Housing and Urban Development's 1.1M SF headquarters, rather than properties that are leased to commercial tenants.
