Office of Property Management

Surplusing of Public Property: Part II
Testimony of Lars Etzkorn, Director Office of Property Management

Adrian M. Fenty, Mayor
Committee on Workforce Development and Government Operations
Member-AT-Large Carol Schwartz, Chairperson

Tuesday, 4 December 2007, 10 am
John Wilson Building, Room 412
1350 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20004-3003

Good morning Chairperson Schwartz and members of the Committee.  I am Lars Etzkorn, Director of the Office of Property Management. I thank you and the members of the Committee on Workforce Development and Government Operations for the opportunity to discuss the Fenty Administration’s initiatives to further improve the District’s process of managing vacant and unused properties. 

As you are aware, there are a variety of ways in which the District government holds or acquires title to real property — fee simple acquisition, condemnation, and tax foreclosures — and there are a variety of types of properties owned by the District government — including government buildings, vacant land, waterfront properties, and small parcels.  Responsibility for such properties, including the acquisition and maintenance of data concerning these properties, is distributed throughout a variety of District agencies depending on the nature of the property and the policy goal to be served through its use by the government or its disposition.

The Mayor, through OPM, has worked to create and maintain a comprehensive inventory of real property owned by the District.  This inventory includes a wide range of real properties ranging from very small parcels that cannot be developed due to their small size and zoning requirements, to large tracts of land like Poplar Point, acquired in land exchanges with the federal government.   The inventory is dynamic and is regularly updated to reflect changes that occur through acquisitions and dispositions.  The inventory helps inform government agencies of the status of District-owned properties and provides essential information needed for decisions around property disposition and development.   Because of many years of limited recordkeeping, this inventory remains a work in progress, but is a vast improvement over what existed in previous years.

Disposition of real property owned by the District serves purposes as varied as the types of property held.  For example:  disposition to serve low income homebuyers and eliminate blight or disposition of large government parcels to spur community economic development.  The overarching purpose of such dispositions is to improve the neighborhoods of the District of Columbia and to assure that District-owned real property is in productive use.  

Mayor Fenty has made it a priority to improve the District’s systems for identifying underutilized properties, informing the public of the existence of these properties and potential re-use plans, and expeditiously putting property back into productive use.

As a result of the varied nature of the portfolio of properties owned by the District, a number of agencies are vested with responsibility for administration and disposition of real property.  The table included in this testimony provides a broad overview of the agencies involved and the types of property for which they are responsible.

Agency	Type of Property	Reasons for Disposition
DMPED	Primarily vacant properties with economic development potential	For economic development and neighborhood revitalization purposes
OPM	Government facilities and land	Government is unable to maximize use
DHCD	Primarily residential or small commercial for community development purposes	For community development purposes
DCHA	Low-income housing	n/a
DCRA	Vacant properties	Only held temporarily
OTR	Tax foreclosure	Only held temporarily

Considerable progress has been made from the time when the District was incapable of identifying even a fraction of the properties that were causing blight in our communities.  However, I believe there is still considerable room for improvement. 

The Fenty Administration is also committed to improving the efficiency of the District’s use of existing properties in order to lower the costs of government administration and allow agencies to plan comprehensively and cost-effectively for any additional property acquisitions or leases.

As mentioned at the previous hearing, OPM has initiated a District-wide facilities condition assessment which will provide the District with the first comprehensive listing of our facilities and their conditions, thereby allowing OPM to develop priorities for maintenance and capital improvement.   OPM is also working with several architectural planning firms to provide comprehensive planning for agency space needs. This will be a major step towards meeting the Fenty Administration space utilization goals, particularly reducing occupancy costs.

In addition to OPM’s efforts, the Office of Planning will begin public facility planning work in early 2008 with feasibility studies for new uses in underused District buildings.  These studies will include benchmarking DC’s practices in facilities management with other cities.  The Office of Planning is also supplementing OPM’s work with research on neighborhood indicators, in order to inform agencies of anticipated changes in neighborhood population, land uses, demand for city services and other data trends to help plan future District operations according to the long-term needs of the community.  In addition, OP will complete zoning analyses for potential re-use sites to determine the possible mix and intensity of uses for each site. 

The Administration is using the shared facilities approach for the Consolidated Forensic Lab. This 240,000-square-foot, state-of-the art facility will house the Metropolitan Police Department Crime Lab, the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, and the DC Public Health Lab.  

In addition, one of the Administration’s priorities is moving District agencies from high-rent, leased space to more affordable space or government-owned space.  One example, in which the District recently realized savings, was by moving some of its Department of Small and Local Business Development staff from a rented space near Union Station to Judiciary Square, a District-owned building.

Over the coming months, we will be looking at ways to ensure better and more timely action on underutilized and nuisance properties, improved coordination among agencies involved with real property acquisition and disposition, superior technology tools to serve public and private entities interested in District-owned property, and processes to promote greater community involvement in important decision-making with regard to real property re-use and disposition.   Ultimately, such reforms will be an important contributor to improving quality of life, delivering government services and maintaining the financial health of the District. 

Chairperson Schwartz, I look forward to working closely with you and members of the public as we consider such reforms and chart a path to better serve the citizens of the District of Columbia on surplus property matters.  I am happy to answer questions you or members of the Committee may have.