GSA Touts Role in Helping Develop D.C.’s Southeast Quadrant

The General Services Administration’s congressional overseers often focus on how efficiently and cost-effectively the agency manages the federal government’s real estate holdings. But GSA is more than a property manager: the agency also collaborates with states, localities and the private sector to promote community economic development.

GSA chief Denise Turner Roth on Wednesday joined with local dignitaries in Washington to celebrate that role. Roth participated in a ribbon cutting ceremony for a mixed-use apartment building at the capital city’s recovering Southeast waterfront. The building is the result of more than a decade of collaboration between GSA and developer Forest City Washington Inc. under the 2000 Southeast Federal Center Public-Private Development Act, which allowed GSA to enter into leases, joint ventures, partnerships and other types of agreements with private entities to develop unused property in the area.  

“Leveraging the presence of the federal government as a catalyst for community economic development is at the heart of my vision for our agency’s future,” Roth said. “Our cooperation with Forest City on this project since 2003 serves as a model for this vision, and we look forward to another decade of working with them and achieving much more.”

District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser noted that the public-private partnership has helped add 66 units of affordable housing in the Navy Yard area.

“How terrific it is to see a wasteland transformed into The Yards,” said Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C. “Forest City has been a model master developer for this ambitious project,” which soon will be “a jewel on the Anacostia River.”