National Science Foundation Expands Headquarters Lease. Finally.

National Science Foundation headquarters rendering. Credit: WDG Architecture

ALEXANDRIA, VA—The US General Service Administration has expanded the National Science Foundation’s lease at 2415 Eisenhower Ave., by 14,386 square feet, according to the Colliers Government Solutions team, which represented Lowe Enterprises in the deal. That address may sound vaguely familiar: it is one of the two buildings under development that will serve as the NSF’s approximate 660,848-square foot headquarters when it delivers (hopefully) at the end of this year. The headquarters is better recognized by its formal address of 2401 Eisenhower Ave., and perhaps some of the controversy that has surrounded the project. The controversy pertinent to this lease, possibly, is the successful pushback by the American Federation of Government Employees a few years ago. The union protested that the 2,241 employees that are to be relocated to the new complex should have larger offices and cubicles than what had been used in the search process, in which the union also noted, it had not been involved. Indeed, the union had to file a Freedom of Information Act to get the details of building’s requirements used during the search process. The initial requirements called for 120-square foot offices for approximately 1,173 employees, and 64-square foot cubicle workstations for 419 employees. After the negotiations between GSA and the union went nowhere the matter was referred to a Federal Labor Relations Authority arbitrator. In October of 2014 he ruled that the NSF had to cut down on the amount of planned collaborative space and redesign the interior to give the workers more personal space. The Washington Business Journal’s Daniel J. Sernovitz, who covered these events extensively, reported in February 2015 that it was still unclear if the NSF would need to lease more space in the planned headquarters (it was originally occupying about 94% of the building).  At that point, GSA had not changed the original lease amount. One year later, it appears that it has.