Unconvinced that the federal government has grown too big? Check out the article titled “Uncle Sam’s Property Bazaar” in the latest Barron’s.
Roll over Batman! The U.S. government recently auctioned off the ultimate man cave for the bargain price of $510,001. The Army’s old Atchison Storage Facility, now the property of a proud Missouri resident, is a 125-acre site with 2.7 million square feet of underground space, half of which is lighted and paved and includes offices, bathrooms, machine shops, and rail- and truck-loading bays. And if you’re into survival, it’s a pretty good hiding place in the event of a nuclear war.
The sale of the Atchison, Kan., property is part of an effort by the Obama Administration to save money by managing federal real-estate holdings more efficiently.
Currently, about 100 properties are being offered in 22 online auctions, accessible through the Website of the General Services Administration.
The offerings include the eight-story 169,801-square-foot Appraisers Store in downtown Baltimore, close to the city’s trendy Inner Harbor; and the 3,385-square-foot Log Cabin Inn in Quilcene, Wash., built in 1892 and actively operated until the 1960s, when the former owner’s wife died. One small caveat: You have to haul it away.
The president’s Office of Management and Budget and the GSA have teamed up to encourage departments and agencies to use their space more rationally and, in some cases, to co-locate operations. They also are aggressively telling the bureaucrats to sell any properties no longer useful to the federal government, says Dan Tangherlini, the acting GSA administrator.
The Obama administration deserves credit for deciding to get rid of nonessential government-owned properties. Good questions for voters and taxpayers to ask: Why did we pay for all this stuff in the first place? What would happen if we reined in government to reduce the likelihood of this type of waste in the future?
