Home Industries Real Estate DOGE axes more than a dozen federal office space leases in Wisconsin,...

DOGE axes more than a dozen federal office space leases in Wisconsin, including three in metro Milwaukee

310 W. Wisconsin Ave. Image from LoopNet

The newly-created federal Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) plans to terminate more than a dozen federal office space leases in Wisconsin, including three in metro Milwaukee. The locations are included on a list of terminated lease contracts published on DOGE’s website this week. A lease for 7,322 square feet of office
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Hunter covers commercial and residential real estate for BizTimes. He previously wrote for the Waukesha Freeman and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. A graduate of UW-Milwaukee, with a degree in journalism and urban studies, he was news editor of the UWM Post. He has received awards from the Milwaukee Press Club and Wisconsin Newspaper Association. Hunter likes cooking, gardening and 2000s girly pop.
[gallery size="full" td_select_gallery_slide="slide" ids="607937,607938,607936"] The newly-created federal Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) plans to terminate more than a dozen federal office space leases in Wisconsin, including three in metro Milwaukee. The locations are included on a list of terminated lease contracts published on DOGE’s website this week. A lease for 7,322 square feet of office space at 111 W. Pleasant St., located just northwest of downtown Milwaukee, is among those expected to be terminated. The space is used by the Defense Contract Management Agency and was set to expire again in April. The agency has been leasing space in the building since 2011, according to the General Services Administration (GSA), which manages and supports the basic functioning of federal agencies. Annual rent for the space is $186,700. A lease for 10,226 square feet of office space at 310 W. Wisconsin Ave. in downtown Milwaukee for the National Labor Relations Board, which began in 2013 and was set to expire in 2026, is also among the terminated leases. Annual rent for the space is $258,800. The 310W building is home to six other federal leases, according to federal government documents, but those had not been terminated as of Wednesday. Lastly, a lease for 6,757 square feet of office space at 2675 N. Mayfair Road in Wauwatosa for the Food and Drug Administration is expected to be terminated. That lease began in 2018 and was set to expire in 2028, according to GSA. Annual rent for the space is $187,400. It was not immediately clear if employees reporting to these locations would be reassigned to other federal offices, or if these departments and agencies would be retaining the same local presence. Representatives from the impacted departments and agencies did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The other terminated federal government office space leases in Wisconsin include: Nationally, DOGE lists 748 lease terminations as of Wednesday afternoon. Also this week, DOGE and the Trump administration published a list of 440 federal buildings that it planned to sell, but then deleted the list on Wednesday, according to the Associated Press. None of the buildings on the initial list are in Wisconsin.

In a Tuesday statement, GSA officials said the agency was terminating “non-core” spaces that it owns as part of the divestment effort, but did not mention DOGE.

GSA owns and maintains over 440 non-core assets comprising almost 80 million rentable square feet across the nation and representing over $8.3 billion in recapitalization needs. Officials said in the statement that slashing non-essential offices and other assets would potentially save more than $430 million in annual operating costs.

“GSA’s decisive action to dispose of non-core assets leverages the private sector, drives improvement for our agency customers and best serves local communities,” the statement said. GSA had implemented a strategy to ensure efficient use of property and reduce the federal government’s footprint in 2015, according to its website. DOGE, created in the wake of Donald Trump‘s January inauguration, has accelerated efforts to shrink the amount of space leased by various federal agencies across the country.

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