Office buildings are an obsolete idea. Perhaps they made sense at one time, but with today’s pervasive internet connectivity and continuing advances in virtual meeting tools, these office buildings are an anachronism and an expensive one as you will see in a moment. An ABC News Report today (presented on Yahoo) by Jon Karl highlighted the hundreds of millions of dollars spent annually to maintain empty government buildings. The report is entitled, Your Tax Dollars Pay for Vacant Buildings. Karl reported that the Veteran’s Administration alone spends $170 Million per year on vacant government buildings. A couple of examples offered by Karl included a VA hospital near Chicago which has been vacant for 15 years, but cannot be sold by the VA as they must get Congress to approve and sell. Another was Washington Federal Building #8, a prime real estate parcel that has been empty for almost decade. It’s worth $100 Million dollars and is so close to the US Capital Building it was readily seen from their reporting vantage point. Why has Building #8 been empty so long? They have been waiting for funding from Congress for renovations.
Karl offers a good example of what can and should be done with these buildings – noting the sale of a huge old Post Office building in Chicago, vacant since the nineties. The massive structure was actually used for a set on Dark Knight – perhaps the Government should go into the movie business – after all, many members of Congress seem like great actors and have provided years of personal and professional entertainment – and in some cases they even did so on purpose. Borrowing the famous quote attributed to Illinois Senator Everett Dirksen, which seems to relate to nicely to this subject: “A Billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you add up to real money.” Where do we go from here? Email your Congressman/Senator urging them to sell these vacant properties. Vacant buildings for 10 and 15 years – we can do better than that.
