Subscriber Benefit
As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe Now
Editor’s note: On Wednesday morning, the Trump administration deleted a previously published list of federal properties identified for sale or closure, which included the buildings in Marion County.
A pair of federally-owned office buildings in Marion County are among more than 400 properties across the U.S. that were put up for sale by the Trump administration on Tuesday.
The downtown Minton-Capehart Federal Building and the Maj. Gen. Emmett J. Bean Federal Center in Lawrence were deemed “not core to government operations” by the General Services Administration, which oversees the government’s real estate portfolio.
The properties were among just three in Indiana on the list of 443 that have been teed up for disposal, along with the Lee H. Hamilton Federal Building and United States Courthouse in New Albany. Asking prices for the properties and other details for the listings were not immediately available.
The move by the agency comes amid a highly publicized push by President Donald Trump and his administration to reduce the size and cost of the federal government, largely through the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, organization being led by tech billionaire Elon Musk.
The 1.58 million-square foot Emmitt Bean Federal Center spans more than 72 acres at 56th Street and North Post Road. It is headquarters to the Defense Finance and Accounting Service, which manages all financial services for the U.S. Department of Defense, including five branches of the military. It opened in 1953 as the Finance Center for the U.S. Army.
The structure is the single-largest federal office building on the General Service Agency’s list for disposal, followed by a 1.57 million-square-foot facility in Atlanta and a federal building in Cleveland that is nearly 1.2 million square feet.
The federal government owns 10 properties across Indiana and has leases for space in another 97.
The Defense Finance and Accounting Service oversees pay for all military and civilian employees, as well as retirees and major defense contractors and vendors. According to GSA, the facility houses 4,000 of the service’s nearly 13,000 employees.
The Minton-Capehart Federal Building, 575 N. Pennsylvania St., is home to Indianapolis offices for the U.S Department of Veteran Affairs, the Internal Revenue Service and the Social Security administration. The nearly 400,000-square-foot structure opened in 1975 and features a brutalist architectural design from Indianapolis firm Woollen, Molzan & Partners.
The Indiana Lawyer reported in January that the building had welcomed a new immigration court to stem the tide of cases that were previously being heard in Chicago. The court employs about 40 employees, including seven immigration judges.
It is one of more than 100 designated federal buildings to be included on the GSA’s list, along with those from numerous other major cities across the U.S.
In a statement addressing its plans, the agency said the list comprises more than 80 million square feet of rentable space and would otherwise require more than $8.3 billion in improvements and updates and cost more than $430 million to operate and maintain annually.
“Decades of funding deficiencies have resulted in many of these buildings becoming functionally obsolete and unsuitable for use by our federal workforce,” the statement said. “We can no longer hope that funding will emerge to resolve these longstanding issues. GSA’s decisive action to dispose of non-core assets leverages the private sector, drives improvements for our agency customers, and best serves local communities.”
The plans to offload government-owned properties comes as hundreds of federal office leases are also being canceled across the country—even as workers are asked to comply with back-to-the-office orders issued in recent weeks.
The nearly 750 lease terminations nationally includes a few in central Indiana. According to the Department of Government Efficiency website, contracts are being canceled for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission space in Carmel and a Centers for Disease Control space at an office park in Fishers.
The Carmel space at 701 City Center Drive consisted of about 247 square feet for a satellite office for the commission. According to DOGE, the cancellation will allow the government to save $4,199 on an annual lease cost, while total savings will be about $11,897.
The 2,850-square-foot Fishers space has already been vacated. The cancellation is expected to save $53,146 for the cost of an annual lease, with $22,144 in actual savings.
DOGE also canceled leases for office space in Griffith, South Bend and Vincennes, with total savings across the state, including for space cuts in Hamilton County, expected to be about $416,375. The reductions will save the government about $577,421 on annual leases.
The department said it has terminated leases for about 9.6 million square feet of space nationally, resulting in roughly $660 million in lease savings. Overall, DOGE claims it has cut government spending by about $105 billion.
Please enable JavaScript to view this content.
Morons
The Minton can go
So you’re willing to drive to Chicago when you have to present paperwork and ID to the social security agency? It happened to us once.
Indiana citizens should be screaming to high heaven!, unless you’re ignorant of what your government does for you.
Easy Dan. The services stay. There are 97 rented buildings in Indiana providing services.
You’re telling me the 4000 people who work at the Finance Center have a place to go?
If the government sells buildings the government already owns to someone who turns around and leases them back to the government to make a profit … the typical behavior of private equity … there should be people arrested. It’s inexcusable. It’s corruption in plain sight.
Exactly, Joe. It’s how “private equity” (modern day “privateers”, or less politely, “pirates”) strips value out of companies they acquire cheap: sell the real estate and lease it back. For those who’ve forgotten, that was the first thing Sun Capital did to Marsh on the road to killing the chain.
Chris B +1
So there is a RTO mandate for Federal employees and at the same time they are doing away with their offices, so does that mean they do not need to comply with RTO if they have no place to go?
I’m thinking they’re going to pull a bunch of mold-infested FEMA trailers to park at places like Grissom and Aterbury, then blame the employees who 1)get sick, 2)can’t travel to these locations, or 3)quit –for failing to maintain operations.
Maybe they’ll buy the Salesforce tower and just put all of us in there — by July (our deadline to be in an office or be fired)
When is DOGE going to audit Musk’s billion $ of contracts.
I’m all for eliminating waste and fraud, but giving billions of $ to Musk and the ultra wealthy with tax cuts is a knife in the back to the hard working American people.
Well, good bye Lawrence as a stable federal employment hub.
I’m with Rick–
Morons
The government is WAY TOO BIG and this is just part of cutting it down to size.
Go Elon!
No, this is not that. This is chaos.
Not too long ago, these actions would have been classified as “crazy Libertarianism”.
Even St. Ronnie started his term with only a federal hiring freeze.
The only government that Elon wants left is enough government to protect people like him from the mass of people that will eventually figure it out and will be outraged that the wealth of this country is concentrated in a handful of people, while they have no education and job prospects and no health care and no assistance.
Keep on being occupied by the transgendered and immigrants. They have you right where they want you.
John, there are likely many parts of the federal government which you do not need (yet). But there are many people not like you who do need the many agencies and departments.
Yes, John, there is likely some bloat. But not as much as you might think.
The better way to determine how to “right-size” the federal government while making it more efficient and effective would be to utilize the Government Accountability Office, which is an independent, nonpartisan government agency within the legislative branch that provides auditing, evaluative, and investigative services to Congress.
Because Article I of the Constitution places the power of the federal purse in the hands of Congress, that is where these decisions need to be made. However, because both chambers are controlled by Republicans, who dare not to insist on having a say how this government serves their constituents, the barely-elected Trump (49.5-percent of the vote) and the unelected Musk (who has taken no oath to the Constitution) hold all the power.
And all the voters who cast ballots for Trump will be left to fend for themselves, if that is even possible.
Gutting the government’s capacity to, you know, govern while also letting unelected, unverified, unvetted teenagers run amok. If you’d want to bring a country to its knees, this is how you do it.
Putin won the Cold War. It’s wild.
Given these are in Carson’s jurisdiction, we can make the assumption that none of the other “representatives” will be bothered to look and say “No, that doesn’t make sense…these are key assets” —
Because there is no such thing as the “Department of Government Efficiency” with zero statutory authority to do anything, the IBJ and all other media referencing this unofficial entity should always, always be referenced as the “so-called Department of Government Efficiency, which lacks statutory authority or powers.” Doing so is and would be factual, and true.
Dept of education was started by Carter
So yes they can do this
Doug, the federal Dept. of Education was created by an act of Congress (Public Law 96-88 which passed in October 1979. And no, Trump and Musk cannot do this without an act of Congress.
Absolutely correct, Brent B.
SOCIAL SECURITY office out in Lawrence does every thing
Yes. And you can do most SS business online.
I love all the whining and crying by Dems here. We should all listen to you about how to run the country. Afterall, you guys were super effective with propping up Biden for four years to look like he was running the country. Nothing behind the curtain there. All transparent and honest.
I love how you think everyone who doesn’t love Trump is automatically a Democrat.
Some of us knew he was a fraud before he got on the escalator and have been proven right every single day since.
Some of you insist on learning it the hard way. I say we just cancel Social Security and Medicare on June 1st for everyone. Let’s get those freeloading parasite old people off the government dime. Rip that band-aid off, give people what they voted for RIGHT NOW.
Social Security Office moved out of Lawrence to 16th and Post Road until MUSK finds out it serves people that are not Oligarchs .
TRUMP said in his Tirade last night he will kill the CHIPS act that was Ind. Sen Todd Young’s big achievement ! How do you like him now !
Clearly the White House is using chaos as a change agent. Reform, sensibility, and accountability are all worthy and needed goals, we’ll see how this plays out in weeks, months, years to come. It may be the impetus for real and needed change, or it could just be chaos and a trip down the rabbit hole. I’m not quite so confident though the Trump administration has the best and brightest in place — and the needs of the people in mind. We’ll see.
No “could be” about it: it is just chaos and a trip down the rabbit hole.
And has anyone looked at their 401K? Flat or down since election day. So much for a 47 bounce.
I would be interested to see who buys them and at what price in relation to fair market value. Just because the properties are sold, doesn’t mean that the Federal govt will move out. When commercial properties are sold, tenant leases are important to the discussion.
Go look at how it worked for Marsh and Sears when they did the same thing, going from owners of their buildings to tenants.
Oh yeah. They folded.
Not a Democrat or Republican here (since that is now a prerequisite). Trump is dismantling everything to privatize it for the benefit of himself and his cronies. He warps the truth (SS records in a database doesn’t mean checks were sent) and causes chaos so there isn’t time to ask questions or verify the truth. Those that think this will end up in their best interest are either dillusional or part of the oligarchy (Musk literally said empathy was a weakness). Not saying we didn’t need change but ignoring history and human psychology was not the way.
Are all you above commenters still talking about the Blue Line?