Photo by Ronnie R. Anyone want a building?

There’s little doubt that the District government is large and occupies plenty of space. But what to do with that space isn’t as simple as one columnist would have you believe.

Two days ago, Examiner columnist Harry Jaffe floated an idea that he claimed could solve just about all of the District’s woes — sell a bunch of buildings. Jaffe was most interested in One Judiciary Square, the District’s former city hall and current home to 20 city agencies:

One Judiciary Square sits right on top of the Metro, a short walk to Capitol Hill and the courthouses. Gandhi’s office estimates it could fetch $208 million. [Councilmember Jack] Evans says he’s heard it could bring $400 million. Let’s split the difference and say $300 million. Salting that away into savings would bring the fund balance back over $1 billion. City bureaucrats would get a new building. Cranes would get busy. The new owner would pay taxes.

The idea sounds great, but it’s about as likely as walking into a random open house, handing the seller your credit card and moving in the next day.

In June, the Washington Business Journal’s Mike Neibauer explained that Evans had requested a financial assessment on what some of the District’s biggest buildings would bring. The money was right — Judiciary Square would get $208.4 million after taxes and expenses, the Franklin D. Reeves Center on U Street would attract $186.7 million and the Police Department headquarters would take in just under $170 million. “Governments just aren’t good owners of buildings. We do some things well, but owning buildings is not one of them,” he quoted Evans as saying.

But as Neibauer explained, the District owns and leases roughly the same amount of office space, and wants to move away from renting. Selling would do just the opposite. And much like with normal residents, the District sees certain benefits in owning. Also, the District has some of the most expensive commercial real estate in the country, so forcing every agency to hunt for affordable offices would be, well, a monumental and likely very expensive task. (Richard Layman adds that there’s a benefit to having government offices close to each other, which would be harder were certain agencies forced to rent.)

None of this includes the predictable political outcry that would come from selling any of the buildings, notably the Reeves Building, which is particularly close to Councilmember Marion Barry’s (D-Ward 8) heart. Simply getting rid of redundancies in government is hard enough; imagine how long and how much political capital it would take to push through the sale of something as big as One Judiciary Square. (Another building that’s been floated is the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library, but some people just love the building.)

That being said, Evans and Jaffe are on to something. The District certainly does own a lot of property scattered throughout the city, and moving to unload some of it would be a start. But kicking off a real estate fire-sale with the District’s biggest buildings is a tough place to start, unless the it’s absolutely proven that the numbers are there. “I wouldn’t foreclose the possibility but I’d have to know a lot more,” said Councilmember Mary Cheh (D-Ward 3) to Neibauer.