On some of the most prime real estate in D.C., in between the National Mall and the $3.6B waterfront megaproject The Wharf, sits a swath of aging, underutilized federal office buildings.

The government is looking to offload one of those buildings — an 845K SF structure built in the 1930s — but that announcement earlier this month may be just the first domino to fall in a strategy that could reshape this prominent part of the nation’s capital.

Momentum has been building in recent months within the government real estate space on efforts to advance a full-scale redevelopment of the federal office cluster in Southwest D.C.

Former government real estate officials, neighborhood leaders and brokers are calling for the feds to offload a series of large buildings just south of the National Mall, relocate employees to other facilities and allow the District and private developers to create a mixed-use district where today the streets sit mostly lifeless.

The Public Buildings Reform Board — an independent, nonpartisan agency created by a 2016 act of Congress to identify ways to reduce the government’s real estate costs — has been taking “a really strong look at that area” in Southwest D.C., said Dan Mathews, a PBRB member.

He said he has talked to “a lot of” development companies and the city in recent months and sees excitement about the potential to redevelop the submarket. He compared it to The Yards, a long-term, 48-acre redevelopment of the Southeast Federal Center that now anchors one of D.C.’s hottest neighborhoods.

“The Yards is a good example of what is possible when a critical mass of federal property goes onto the market in such a way that an entire submarket can be remade,” Mathews said last week at Bisnow‘s DMV 2025 Economic and Political Forecast event. “We have an opportunity like that right now south of Independence Avenue.”

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