A U.S. State Department building in Rosslyn might be going up for sale amid ongoing federal spending cuts.
The office building at 1801 N. Lynn Street, home to the Bureau of Diplomatic Security, was among 443 federal properties identified as “not core to government operations” in a federal list posted yesterday.
The General Services Administration has since pulled the list from its website, which now says that a “non-core property list” is “coming soon.” Whether the building will really be sold, and whether the State Department will relocate its Lynn Street operations, remains to be seen.
The office building, constructed in 2000, has an assessed value of $223 million, according to online records. The federal government purchased the 354,000-square-foot tower for $240 million in 2017.
The assessed value of 1801 N. Lynn Street has declined by about 21% from a peak of $285 million in 2023. But State Department operations there remained active today (Wednesday), with staffed security checkpoints and people bustling in and out.
Located next to Wiseguy Pizza, the address is also home to the State Department Federal Credit Union and a retail bay that has remained empty since 2021.
The building was one of two Arlington properties included on the GSA’s original list, since removed from the web but captured on Internet Archive.
The list also included a piece of land along Washington Blvd in Arlington. It did not provide more information on the size of this property or its location.
In total, the GSA is considering cuts to 80 million square feet of office space, with total operating costs of about $430 million per year.
“Decades of funding deficiencies have resulted in many of these buildings becoming functionally obsolete and unsuitable for use by our federal workforce,” the GSA claimed in a press release. “We can no longer hope that funding will emerge to resolve these longstanding issues.
“GSA’s decisive action to dispose of non-core assets leverages the private sector, drives improvements for our agency customers, and best serves local communities,” the release said.
The GSA noted that it wouldn’t necessarily sell all the properties on its list. It would also consider options like sale-leasebacks, ground leases and other kinds of public/private partnerships.
“As part of our strategy to optimize the GSA portfolio, [the Public Building Service] will be engaging in market research and customer agency feedback regarding the potential disposition strategies for non-core assets, and will consider current use, occupancy, cost of agency relocation, and local market conditions when assessing disposition,” the GSA said.
In addition to slashing the federal workforce, President Donald Trump’s administration has been taking increasingly concrete steps toward relocating numerous agencies out of the D.C. area.
While many questions remain open, experts have predicted significant negative impacts on local economies throughout the region.
