The FBI will be pulling up stakes from part of a Gallery Place office building it has occupied for the past 15 years after the federal government failed to seal a long-term deal with the building’s landlord to extend its stay.
The General Services Administration has instead struck a short-term lease extension at 616 H St. NW through December 2022, to give the FBI enough time to relocate its employees to space it leases elsewhere, according to a notice the GSA recently posted to beta.sam.gov. The GSA is paying about $2.8 million in annual rent under a lease term that had been slated to expire in late September 2020. The GSA initially signed its lease for about 57,800 square feet in September 2005, according to GSA data.
It’s not the outcome the federal government’s main civilian real estate arm had hoped for in entering into negotiations with Oxford BIT Gallery Place Property Owner LLC — an affiliate of Oxford Properties and the Building Investment Trust that owns the building. The goal was to reach a succeeding 15-year lease. As the GSA tells it, the two sides were close to a deal when Oxford BIT dug in.
