Boston Properties owns at least three major buildings in the District with the federal government as the sole tenant. Along a stretch of E Street SW, the firm owns the headquarters of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency at 250 E, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration headquarters at 300 E, and the International Trade Commission headquarters at 500 E. Boone declined to give information on the security procedures in those buildings, but did say they are handled by the federal government and not Boston Properties.
According to the General Services Administration, the federal Office of Personnel Management issued the order on Tuesday for federal employees to leave government buildings and go home. In the Washington area, the order affected 171 buildings owned by the federal government and 430 locations where the government has leases, all of which are managed by GSA. However, GSA only manages about 40% of the space around the country that the federal government owns or leases.
The precautionary actions that Boston Properties took affected 46 buildings from Richmond, VA to Baltimore with 9.7 million sf of space. The Boston-based developer also owns 88 other buildings in Boston, New York, Princeton, NJ, and San Francisco with some 21.3 million sf of space.
Property managers were not the only real estate players that had to come to grips with Tuesday's terrorist attack. Construction firms were also affected. Again, with the federal government the biggest tenant in the District, many projects were halted Tuesday. Jeff Donohoe of Donohoe Cos. said his construction firm left four federal work sites on Tuesday. Those sites included construction work for the Departments of State and Justice, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which has been busy responding to the crisis. "I don't think anybody could imagine what would have happened," Donohoe, director of business development, told GlobeSt.com. Donohoe was not certain as of Wednesday if crews had returned to those work sites, but they were back on a variety of private developments. He also said the actions on Tuesday would not deter his firm from doing government projects in the future. "We've been involved with the government for several projects. If the government is willing to be in that situation, we'll go there."
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