About-Face: Feds Plan to Leave McIntyre Building

In what appears an about-face, the administrator of the General Services Administration says the government is preparing to leave the McIntyre Federal Building and work with the city of Portsmouth for the transfer of the property.

U.S. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) said the GSA made the announcement in a letter May 29. It is a 180 away from the GSA's positions earlier this year, including a letter to the Portsmouth City Council detailing its decision to stay at the Daniel Street building.

In that March letter, a regional administrator said a move to a new facility at Pease International Tradeport, at a projected cost of $20 million, was just not economically viable.

However, GSA Administrator Dan Tangherlini, in the May 29 letter to Shaheen, says the GSA will “immediately begin working with the current tenants in McIntyre to develop updated requirements, incorporating new, efficient standards that should allow them to reduce their overall space needs …  [and] will engage with the City of Portsmouth to find a mutually beneficial path forward for divesting the McIntyre building."

Shaheen applauded the news. "I am looking forward to continue working with the GSA in whatever way possible to help the City of Portsmouth obtain the McIntyre Building once federal agencies have relocated so we can start developing the jobs and economic revenue from this long-awaited transition," she said in a press release.

The New Hampshire delegation has worked with Portsmouth Mayor Robert Lister and the City Council to effect the transfer based on a 2004 federal law that "conditionally directed" the GSA to build a new facility at Pease International Tradeport and convey the McIntyre building to the city of Portsmouth.