DOGE Terminates 4 Federal Office Leases In Atlanta
Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency's has exited more than 150K SF of office space in Metro Atlanta in its push to drastically reduce the size of the federal government.
The largest office to get the ax outside of the Washington, D.C., area, according to DOGE's updated website, is a nearly 120K SF lease in Atlanta for the Department of Health and Human Services.
While DOGE doesn't specify the building where the lease was terminated, the federal government's inventory of leased space shows a lease of the same size at the Williams Building at 2877 Brandywine Road in Chamblee.
The lease for the building, which has been used as an office for the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was initiated in 2016 and set to expire in March 2026.
DOGE says the lease termination is effective as of May 31, which saves the federal government a little more than $2M of remaining rent obligations on the building.
The building is owned by an affiliate of Chicago-based asset management firm Boyd Watterson Asset Management. The company purchased the 132K SF office building in 2018 for $26.5M from the TPA Group, according to DeKalb County records. Officials with Boyd Watterson didn't return calls seeking comment.
DOGE claims it has thus far canceled 2.3M SF of office leases, which cost the government an estimated $78.8M in annual payments. Many of the leases that were on the chopping block were set to expire within the next year.
That is also the case at the second-largest Atlanta-area lease to be terminated, a 17K SF office for the Food and Drug Administration. The inventory of leased spaces, maintained by the U.S. General Services Administration, shows a lease of that size at 2077 Convention Center Concourse, a four-story, 128K SF office building in College Park.
The building is owned by the College Park Business & Industrial Development Authority, according to Clayton County records. The agency did not return calls seeking comment.
The FDA is the third-largest tenant within the building, according to CoStar information obtained by Bisnow. The GSA inventory shows the lease was set to expire July 31. DOGE's website indicates the total estimated savings on canceling the lease is $0.
DOGE slashed a total of 153K SF in leases in Metro Atlanta, including 8,300 SF for a Federal Trade Commission office and a 7,700 SF lease for an agency called Allowance To Former Presidents.
DOGE said its site would be updated twice weekly to reflect further cuts it makes to the federal government. The Trump administration has made it a priority to reduce the size of the federal government.
As part of those cuts, the administration fired thousands of probationary employees at agencies across the government over the weekend, the Associated Press reported, including FDA employees in the agency’s food, medical devices and tobacco products.
And the AP reported that officials expect to fire 5,200 probationary employees within HHS, which oversees not only the FDA but also the CDC, whose workforce the Trump administration reportedly wants to trim by 10%.
