Feds consider selling Fort Worth's Lanham Federal Building, other big buildings
March 5,2025
See full Dallas Business Journal article by Seth Bodine here.
The U.S. General Services Administration is eyeing a large office building in downtown Fort Worth as one of many properties it could sell as the federal government seeks savings.
The federal agency that oversees the government's property portfolio listed the 669,264-square-foot Fritz G. Lanham Federal Building at 819 Taylor St. among properties across the nation it intends to sell. A 8,341-square-foot parking garage nearby is also on the list.
The building opened in 1966 and is named after Texas U.S. Representative Fritz Garland Lanham, who served in Congress from 1919 to 1947. Agencies such as the Social Security Administration, Internal Revenue Service and the National Labor Relations Board work inside the building.
The building is one of 443 properties the GSA had listed on its website as of early March 5 that it calls "non-core assets." A GSA online statement said the offices on the list cost more than $430 million a year to operate and maintain and represent more than $8.3 billion in recapitalization needs, but the Public Buildings Service "remains fully committed" to meeting workforce needs as employees return to office.
As of noon March 5, however, the list was removed from the GSA website and a message on the page read “Non-core property list (Coming soon).”
"Just for clarity, the non-core assets are not currently on the market, but posting the list reflects GSA’s intention to sell off government-owned real estate," GSA spokesperson for the Greater Southwest region Jorge Pineda wrote in an email to Dallas Business Journal. "No decisions have been made yet. Staff roles and employment decisions of non-GSA employees will be determined by the agency they work for."
GSA also lists several other properties across the Dallas-Fort Worth area for potential sale. That includes sizable buildings in Dallas such as the 260,789-square-foot Santa Fe Federal Building at 1114 Commerce St., the 233,324-square-foot Terminal Annex Building at 207 S. Houston St., and the 189,318-square-foot A. Maceo Smith Federal Building at 525 S Griffin St. The Centre, a 316,640-square-foot property at 4100 Alpha Road in Farmers Branch, is also listed.
The U.S. government leases office space in more than 85 properties totaling more than 2.75 million square feet across the Metroplex. That's enough to completely fill the tallest towers in Dallas and Fort Worth, the Bank of America Plaza and Burnett Plaza. Some leases expire as soon as March 31. The federal government has been reducing its real estate for years, dating back to before the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. But President Donald Trump could accelerate the reductions in real estate.
Fort Worth and nearby areas have been seeing shrinking negative absorption for office space, with -83,473 square feet seen in 2024, according to real estate firm JLL. The average vacancy rates across Fort Worth remained flat, ending the year at 17.9%. Newer class A space helped with the numbers, but it wasn't enough to offset the negative absorption seen in older Class B buildings.
Location Mentioned: Burnett Plaza