USDA to offload HQ building as it prepares to consolidate space and relocate staff

The Agriculture Department on Wednesday announced it has taken preliminary steps to clear its employees from one of its headquarters buildings in Washington as it plans to shift thousands of them into new locations by the end of the year. 

The General Services Administration, which manages the federal government’s real estate, will spearhead that process, USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins told reporters. The department announced the disposal of the South Building, which Rollins and other officials repeatedly described as dilapidated and mostly empty, last year as part of a larger reorganization that will push 2,600 employees out of the national capital region. Officials said the move is expected to save the government $1.6 billion in delinquent maintenance on the 90-year-old building.

Rollins and GSA Administrator Ed Forst did not fully commit to a sale of the South Building, which comprises two city blocks and is situated just south of the National Mall, saying instead they would undertake a deliberate process to consult with stakeholders and the private sector. Such a move could result in the building being sold to the highest bidder or repurposed by another government tenant.

“It is a long, it's a comprehensive process,” Forst said. “We want to be good listeners, and then we'll execute on this.”

USDA also plans to dispose of its Braddock Place facility in Alexandria, Virginia, as it announced last year. The Food and Nutrition Service employees who currently work there will be relocated locally, to the Yates Building in Washington or the George Washington Carver Center in Maryland. Government Executive first reported of USDA’s plan to offload a headquarters building and relocate employees out of Washington last April. 

The department plans to move all of the employees it is repositioning, both those relocating locally and to new sites throughout the country, by the end of the year, USDA Deputy Secretary Stephen Vaden said. It plans to inform employees of their new destinations in the coming months so they can move before the start of the new school year this fall. The department is standing up five regional hubs around the country that will house relocated employees, located in Raleigh, North Carolina; Kansas City, Missouri; Indianapolis; Fort Collins, Colorado; and Salt Lake City, Utah. It has not yet announced any further details for those locations. 

“We're taking our employees into account,” Vaden said. “We know many of them have school-aged children. We want them to make the move to our new hub locations across the country. So as part of that, we're planning to go through all the legal and union and other regulatory steps that we need to take to do so lawfully and get the proper notice.”

Agriculture’s reorganization will shrink the size of its workforce to better align to the department’s resources and priorities, eliminate management layers and consolidate redundant functions, Rollins said. She said the South Building was “teeming with activity” decades ago but is now 70% empty on any given day. 

“The first time I walked through about a year ago, I was stunned,” Rollins said, who added the facility houses 7,000 offices. 

The building is the largest liability of all of GSA’s assets, Forst said, and unloading it would help fulfill President Trump’s goal of offloading underutilized federal buildings. Forst said GSA would work with potential buyers to understand what uses there could be for the building and vowed to prioritize "prosperity" for Washington. He did not commit to a timeline for finalizing a plan for the South Building, but said he hoped to complete the process before he leaves office at the end of President Trump’s term. 

USDA currently has 4,600 employees in the Washington area and is looking to shrink that number to 2,000. Just 10% of the department’s workforce is currently in the capital region. It will utilize layoffs to meet the goal as needed if employees refuse reassignments, officials have said. The department has already shed more than 15,000 employees from its initiative that allowed employees to sit on paid leave for several months before resigning.

After Vaden announced the plans for USDA’s FNS employees on Wednesday, he said department leaders would offer details for the department’s other seven mission areas in the coming months. 

During Trump’s first term in 2019, the department relocated its Economic Research Service and National Institute of Food and Agriculture to Kansas City, over the objections of employees and some lawmakers. Following the move, both agencies lost more than half of their staff, leading to a significant loss of productivity from which it took the agencies years to recover. Under President Joe Biden, both agencies moved their headquarters back to Washington while maintaining their Kansas City offices.

Under a measure Biden signed into law just before leaving office, federal agencies must track the utilization of their buildings and GSA must look to consolidate or sell any facilities that are more than 40% empty for two consecutive years. USDA has not met that threshold for any of its buildings in the Washington area, Vaden said. 

USDA solicited feedback on its reorganization plan last year, leading to 14,000 unique responses. Of those, 82% expressed negativity toward the plan, while 5% took a positive tone. Employees, lawmakers and stakeholders submitting the comments warned of a significant brain drain and disruptions to key farmer-support programs if the changes were implemented.