Energy Department To Displace Education Department In Latest Agency HQ Shake-Up

The Trump administration is commencing another federal headquarters swap, clearing the way to offload a massive complex in southwest D.C. that has long been eyed for disposition.

The Department of Energy is moving out of its 1.8M SF James V. Forrestal complex on Independence Avenue SW into the Department of Education’s 50-year-old headquarters, the Lyndon B. Johnson building on Maryland Avenue SW. The General Services Administration announced the move in conjunction with the departments Thursday.

The Department of Education, which is being dismantled by the Trump administration, will in turn move into a building at 500 D St. SW, space that was previously leased for the now largely defunct U.S. Agency for International Development.

The GSA said Energy’s move out of Forrestal will save taxpayers over $350M in maintenance costs while shrinking its footprint by 45%.

The LBJ building has been 70% vacant with the Department of Education there, the GSA's release said. The move will reduce Education's footprint by 80% and save $4.8M annually. Education is slated to move in August. 

In a release, Education Secretary Linda McMahon said the department is “pleased” to give its building “to an agency that will benefit far more from the space” than her own agency. 

Half of the Department of Education's workforce has departed since President Donald Trump took office, Federal News Network reported this month. More than 2,000 employees have either been laid off, taken deferred resignation offers or retired over the past year.

The union representing more than 2,000 current and former Department of Education employees, AFGE Local 252, released a statement pushing back on the move. It said the announcement is the latest in the administration's “dismantling” of the agency that has "traumatized" federal workers. It also noted its headquarters building was recently renovated. 

“The message the Secretary’s announcement sends to our staff and the American public is clear–education is next on the chopping block,” read the statement from AFGE Local 252 President Rachel Gittleman. “But after more than a year of fighting back against this unlawful and unprecedented gutting of a Congressionally created agency, we know that the will of the people, congressional intent, and the law is on our side.”

The building swap leaves the massive Forrestal complex vacant and ready for disposition.

The complex's primary building, an expansive brutalist structure, sits as a barrier between the National Mall and the Southwest Waterfront. Urban planners have long viewed its repositioning as one of the keys to connecting those nodes and creating a mixed-use neighborhood in the federal southwest corridor. 

Forrestal was part of a 7M SF list of federal properties that the Public Buildings Reform Board recommended for accelerated disposition in its latest round last May. The Office of Management and Budget approved the list that same month. 

The news that Forrestal will likely soon be on the market comes the same week as the GSA offloaded the first piece of the southwest federal cluster: the former Regional Office Building at Seventh and D streets SW. D.C.-based Dalian Development purchased the nearly 1M SF property that formerly housed the GSA’s National Capital Region team, for $24.3M this week. 

The Energy-Education swap is the third time in a year that the federal government has done this kind of shuffling, replacing an agency with another agency to clear out a headquarters building. 

Last June, the GSA announced it would be moving the Department of Housing and Urban Development from its 1.1M SF headquarters in southwest D.C. to Alexandria, replacing the National Science Foundation in its leased space. 

The NSF, meanwhile, is relocating to leased space less than a mile away that was vacated by the U.S. Patent and Trade Office. 

Less than a week later, the GSA announced a plan to move the Federal Bureau of Investigation from the J. Edgar Hoover Building down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center, the former USAID headquarters. 

“The pattern that I'm noticing is that agencies that this administration views more favorably are displacing agencies that the administration views less favorably and would probably like to do away with entirely,” said Cushman & Wakefield Executive Vice Chair Darian LeBlanc, a top government leasing broker.

“Clearly that applies to USAID, and clearly that applies to Department of Education. I think there's no misunderstanding about the future of those agencies under this administration.” 

UPDATE, MARCH 27, 12:40 P.M. ET: This story has been updated with a statement from AFGE Local 252.