CFTC Downsizes By Nearly 50% With Move To Federal Center
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission is the latest federal agency to shave off a significant chunk of its office footprint.
The CFTC is moving from its three-decade-long home in the West End to a federal-tenant-packed Federal Center building. The agency is taking 147K SF at Patriots Plaza III at 355 E St. SW for 10 years with a 10-year option, the Washington Business Journal reported, citing sources.
The 1M SF Patriots Plaza property, divided into three buildings, is owned by Multi-Employer Property Trust. Notice of the lease award to MEPT/FCP Patriots Plaza LLC was posted to The System For Award Management, the federal government’s solicitation platform, Wednesday evening for a total contract value of $116M. The notice didn't give the square footage.
CFTC, which regulates the U.S. derivatives market, has been in a space at Beacon Capital Partners' 3 Lafayette Centre at 1155 21st St. NW since 1994. It leases 288K SF at the building a few blocks from George Washington University.
Last year, the General Services Administration, the federal government's real estate arm, released a prospectus proposing to downsize the agency by 173K SF when its lease came due in September 2025, the WBJ reported at the time.
There’s been a push to reduce the federal footprint going back nearly a decade, but the pandemic is accelerating the effort as federal workforce norms changed.
Federal agencies use just 12% of their headquarters buildings, a study by the Public Buildings Reform Board, an independent body created by Congress, revealed last month.
There are two bills moving through Congress aimed at speeding up the rightsizing of the federal footprint. Meanwhile, in its 2025 budget proposal, the White House asked for $425M for a new real estate optimization program to make better use of federal space and dispose of unnecessary federal facilities.
The GSA oversees 363M SF of federal office space, which is about half leased and half owned. The agency says it has cut 14M SF in leases and disposed of nearly 12M SF since 2013.
Most recently, the GSA indicated it was planning to cut the National Labor Relations Board’s 153K SF in D.C.’s Navy Yard area by at least 40% when its lease expires in 2025. It also sent out a solicitation seeking to reduce 150K SF of its office space at NoMa’s Constitution Square in 2025.
Last year, the Patent and Trademark Office consolidated the largest federal agency lease in the region, shrinking from five to three buildings in Alexandria, Virginia, and reducing its footprint from 2.4M SF to 1.6M SF.
