Update, 3:05 p.m., Friday, March 7: A General Services Administration spokesperson on Friday said that the agency is “reviewing all options to optimize our footprint and building utilization” but did not specifically address the Roanoke IRS office.
“A component of our space consolidation plan will be the termination of many soft term leases,” the spokesperson said in an email. “To the extent these terminations affect public facing facilities and/or existing tenants, we are working with our agency partners to secure suitable alternative space. In many cases this will allow us to increase space utilization and obtain improved terms.”
A Roanoke real estate firm says that the Internal Revenue Service’s office lease in the Star City will not be canceled despite the Department of Government Efficiency saying otherwise.
DOGE’s website lists more than 700 federal government lease cancellations that it says will save taxpayers money. Among them is the IRS’s Roanoke lease at 210 First St. S.W., and DOGE says canceling it would save $289,115 a year for a total of $698,694.
The address is in the First Campbell Square building at the corner of Campbell Avenue and First Street downtown. Other tenants there include the Virginia Department of Social Services, the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of the U.S. Trustee, and federal and state public defenders.
“We did receive a notice from the General Services Administration (GSA) that the IRS lease at First Campbell Square was being terminated,” Matt Huff, president of Poe & Cronk Real Estate Group, which handles property management and leasing for the building, said in an email.
“However, two days later the GSA withdrew their termination notice and confirmed that the IRS lease is in full force and effect through its lease term. We believe the DOGE website has not kept up to accurately reflect this recission notice,” Huff said.
The GSA supports basic functions of federal government agencies, including by owning and leasing properties nationwide.
The IRS’s Roanoke office provides services to taxpayers, including assistance with basic tax law, forms and payments, according to the IRS website. The next closest office is in Lynchburg.
The website says the IRS’s Roanoke office accounts for 16,693 square feet. Huff declined to provide details on the office’s use of space or how much the IRS pays under the lease.
The termination notice came on Feb. 25, while the withdrawal notice came on Feb. 27, Huff said.
DOGE says its website is updated weekly and was last updated on Wednesday.
DOGE, the GSA and the IRS did not respond to requests for confirmation on Wednesday.
DOGE is overseen by the billionaire Elon Musk and is part of President Donald Trump’s plan to shrink the federal government. Trump established it on his first day in office with an executive order that reorganized another agency, the U.S. Digital Service.
In all, DOGE claims more than $100 billion in savings from canceling government contracts, leases and grants, but scrutiny has revealed typos and other errors that appear to overstate those savings.
On Tuesday, the Associated Press, citing anonymous sources, reported that the IRS is drafting plans to cut up to half of its 90,000-person workforce.
The agency in February laid off about 7,000 probationary employees with a year or less of service, according to the AP.
WDBJ reported last month that 14 IRS employees in Roanoke were laid off.
DOGE also lists an IRS office lease in Fredericksburg as slated for cancellation.
Other leases in Virginia that the DOGE website lists for cancellation are for the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service in Richmond; the Bureau of Industry and Security in Herndon; the GSA in Arlington, Charlottesville and Lorton; the Department of Homeland Security in Arlington; the U.S. Geological Survey in Richmond; the Government Accountability Office in Virginia Beach; the Mine Safety Health Administration in Arlington; the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration office in Hampton; and the Office of U.S. Attorneys in Richmond.
None are in Southside or Southwest Virginia.
Besides canceling leases, the GSA also says it will sell more than 440 “non-core” government-owned buildings totaling nearly 80 million square feet of office space that would otherwise cost $8.3 billion to renovate.
“Decades of funding deficiencies have resulted in many of these buildings becoming functionally obsolete and unsuitable for use by our federal workforce. We can no longer hope that funding will emerge to resolve these longstanding issues,” the GSA said Tuesday.
The agency on Tuesday published a list of these assets that in Virginia included addresses in Arlington, Charlottesville, Norfolk, Reston, Richmond, Springfield and Sterling. None are in Southside or Southwest Virginia. As of Wednesday morning, the list had been replaced by a short message that said the list would be “coming soon.”