USDA To Move Thousands Of Employees Out Of D.C., Vacate Huge Southwest Building
Before the construction of the Pentagon, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's South Building was considered the largest office building in the world at 2.2M SF. It will soon become vacant.
The USDA announced Thursday it plans to vacate three buildings in the D.C. area as it relocates around 2,500 employees to other parts of the country.
The three buildings — the South Building near the National Mall, the Braddock Place facility in Alexandria and the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center in Maryland — would be given to the GSA, which could either use them for other federal agencies or dispose of them, according to a press release.
The USDA said it plans to keep no more than 2,000 employees in the D.C. region, down from 4,600 today. They will be housed in the Yates and Whitten buildings, both located on Independence Avenue next to the South Building, and in the National Agricultural Library in Beltsville.
The relocated positions would be housed at USDA's offices in Indianapolis; Salt Lake City; Raleigh, North Carolina; Kansas City, Missouri; and Fort Collins, Colorado. The department says these areas have much lower costs of living than D.C., and the moves would "bring USDA closer to the people it serves."
USDA has also reduced its nationwide workforce by more than 15,000 this year through voluntary retirements and the deferred resignation program, according to the release, which said the Trump administration has studied the department and found it is a "bloated, expensive, and unsustainable organization."
“President Trump was elected to make real change in Washington, and we are doing just that by moving our key services outside the beltway and into great American cities across the country,” Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins said in a statement.
While losing thousands of federal workers would be a blow to D.C., the emptying out of the massive South Building presents a significant opportunity for redevelopment.
The monolithic structure is part of the cluster of federal buildings directly south of the National Mall that local and federal officials have been eyeing for a large-scale, mixed-use redevelopment. Some federal planners have called for them to be converted to museums for the Smithsonian Institution.
The South Building has a daily occupancy of around 1,900 people — less than one-third of its 6,000-person capacity, the USDA said in the release — and $1.3B in deferred maintenance.
The building wasn't included in the list of properties that the Trump administration approved in May for accelerated disposal based on the recommendation of the Public Buildings Reform Board. But the PBRB identified it as one of the buildings it is investigating for its next round of disposal recommendations.
The South Building spans two full blocks along Independence Avenue between 12th and 14th streets, and it is connected to the USDA's Whitten Building by bridges that cross Independence.
Constructed in the early 1930s, the building consists of 4,500 rooms, 7 miles of corridors, 12 million bricks and 11,000 miles of steel. It has seven wings connected by six interior courtyards, offering significant light and air that could make it a candidate for a conversion to residential uses if the government sells it to a developer.
