A plan pushed by a Trump appointee to slash the number of worksites owned and leased by the federal government could immediately affect dozens of federal offices across Colorado and even more in the coming months and years.
A senior General Services Administration official recently publicly said that the agency, which manages federal property for other agencies, hopes to cut its holdings by half.
The Federal News Network reported Tuesday that the GSA is now looking to cut the agency’s budget in half, too, as part of the Trump administration’s larger push to slash budgets and workforce across the federal government.
CPR News has also obtained a confidential presentation by senior GSA officials shown to leadership in Colorado describing the agency’s plans. The presentation says the plan is not yet final but argues for the sale of more than a thousand federally owned buildings across the country. It does not mention any properties in Colorado.
The sale, the presentation claims, would allow the government to avoid more than $4 billion in deferred maintenance and other liabilities and hundreds of millions of dollars in yearly operating expenses.
“The federal government owns significantly more real estate than it either needs or can afford to maintain,” the presentation says. It cites the recently passed “Use It” law as giving the GSA the legal authority to mandate real estate “rightsizing.”
It cites the recently passed “Use It” law as giving the GSA the legal authority to mandate real estate “rightsizing.” Former President Biden initially opposed the bill but signed it last month after it was added to a larger water bill.
The presentation mostly focuses on federal buildings in Washington, D.C., calling for the consolidation of the headquarters of agencies including the Department of Education, the Federal Aviation Administration and the GSA itself.
But current and former GSA officials say the agency’s plans would likely also be felt sharply in Colorado, which is home to some 40,000 federal employees and the massive Denver Federal Center in the western suburbs.
A long-time official at the Denver Federal Center, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said they are concerned that the entire campus — the largest concentration of federal agencies outside of Washington, D.C. — would be sold to help the federal government meet its cost-reduction target.
“My colleagues as a whole are shell-shocked,” the official said.
Denise Maes, who oversaw the GSA’s work in 16 states, including the Rocky Mountain region, during the last two years of the Biden administration, shared the concern that the Federal Center could be sold.
“That’s certainly a reasonable inference from putting all these data points together,” Maes said. “But it’s outrageous.”
A spokesperson for the GSA’s regional office has not yet responded to a request for comment.
Trump and Elon Musk’s cost-cutting DOGE is now targeting federal property
Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, which aims to make $1 trillion in cuts and which is subject to a lawsuit questioning its legality, has honed in on the GSA in recent days. The agency owned or leased more than 360 million square feet of space across more than 8,000 buildings nationwide, according to its most recent annual report.
The GSA says it controls about 20 million square feet across the six-state Rocky Mountain region, most of which is office space. In Colorado, the GSA owns 89 buildings totaling more than 6 million square feet and leases another 4 million square feet.
Regional GSA officials across the country are being directed to begin canceling leases, the Associated Press reported this week.
Publicly available federal data shows that 64 GSA leases totaling 1.27 million square feet and about $35 million in rent could be canceled now in Colorado. Twenty more leases will be eligible for cancellation over the next two years, the data shows.
But “that’s just the first volley,” the official said. The second will be a push to sell property.
Exactly how federal buildings would be sold isn’t yet clear, the official said. But the confidential presentation says the GSA will push for the allowance of “the introduction of private capital into federal asset strategies.” That may mean the federal government will end up renting back space from the new private owner in some cases, the official said.
Maes said the GSA has a long-standing process of identifying and disposing of unneeded federal property. But she said the plan outlined by the Trump-installed GSA leaders makes her worry sales and lease terminations will be done “in a very ad hoc manner without real planning, without real thought.”
“It's going to cost taxpayers more money,” she said. “You're going to have a lot of people without a job that are going to be unemployed, and that's going to be a problem for the economy. And it's just being done in some sort of crazy, manic sort of way.”
DOGE and Musk are also targeting other savings from the GSA, the official said. The department spent $275 million last fiscal year on new construction, energy bills, maintenance, and other contracts across the region, they said, most of which went to small businesses.
It’s not yet clear whether the Denver Federal Center will be put up for sale
The Federal Center hosts more than two dozen government agencies, including the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the United States Geological Survey, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Transportation, and more. More than 6,000 federal employees and contractors work on the campus that grew out of a World War II-era munitions plant.
No federal properties in Colorado have been identified for sale yet, the official said. The person has not seen any direction or documents naming the Federal Center as a target but said its sale would likely be necessary for the GSA to meet its reduction goal.
The Federal Center has about 4.1 million square feet of office and research space, making up more than half of the GSA’s owned property in Colorado.
“I have cried every day for the last eight days,” the person said, adding: “These are assets that the American people have entrusted to the government to protect. To see the fire sale that will happen is only detrimental to the public. It’s short-term gain for long-term cost.”
Lakewood Mayor Wendi Strom said in a Wednesday email that the city has not received any “written, definitive order or information about any actions being taken regarding any closure of the Federal Center.”
But, she added, the Federal Center is critically important to the local economy and said any significant change to it would be of “extreme concern.”
“Any desire for change should involve a prudent, planned process that includes the input of local residents and representatives before any decision is made, as has been done in the past with significant actions such as military base closures,” she wrote. “The Federal Center is important to us, and we will continue to monitor the situation closely.”
Maes said any effort to sell the Federal Center would take time, which she called “the only bright side of the story.”
“I think a lot should be done to try to stop it in the meantime,” she said.
