Federal Agency Cancels New HQ Lease On Pennsylvania Avenue
The U.S. Agency for Global Media is backing out of the full-building lease for its D.C. headquarters that it signed in September.
The agency, the parent company for Voice of America and several other media outlets, announced Saturday it was canceling the 15-year lease at 1875 Pennsylvania Ave. as part of a new push to “drastically downsize” the agency.
“This agency is not salvageable,” it said.
EastBanc owns the Pennsylvania Avenue property that lost anchor tenant WilmerHale when the law firm vacated in 2022. The landlord announced Oct. 1 it signed USAGM to a 290K SF lease to backfill the space.
EastBanc declined to comment.
USAGM placed more than 1,000 employees on indefinite leave Saturday, NPR reported.
These moves were a direct response to an executive order President Donald Trump signed on Friday requiring seven agencies and programs, including USAGM, to reduce their scope as much as possible as is legally permissible.
Friday evening, Kari Lake, who was selected by the Trump administration to oversee USAGM, posted a video on X calling the agency's headquarters “a colossal waste of money.”
Lake pointed out “fancy conference rooms with wall-to-wall windows,” “massive waterfalls,” “bridges to nowhere,” and leather and marble furnishings and finishes.
“I’m sitting here on the 14th floor of a shiny, brand-new, beautiful skyscraper building that is costing you, the taxpayer, a fortune,” she said.
The move to 1875 Pennsylvania Ave. NW was a relocation from owned to leased space. USAGM had occupied 698K SF at the Wilbur J. Cohen Federal Building at 330 Independence Ave. SW, according to the Washington Business Journal.
In its release, USAGM said the lease at 1875 Pennsylvania Ave. cost nearly a quarter of a billion dollars. It said the building “has no broadcasting facilities to meet the needs of the agency,” and the deal included a $9M commission “to a private real estate agent with connections.”
Former USAGM Chief Financial Officer Grant Turner told NPR that due to the slow office market, the lease actually represented a good deal for the agency, saving it $150M over its 15-year term.
The Trump administration has been canceling hundreds of leases across the country over the past few weeks in an effort led by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. To date, 793 leases have been canceled, totaling more than 10M SF, according to JLL’s database tracking the situation.
