DC Confronts Its Biggest Obstacle to Downtown Revival: Federal Buildings
Washington, DC, Mayor Muriel Bowser says restoring downtown may depend on rethinking federal buildings that are particularly hard to repurpose.
Muriel Bowser, mayor of the District of Columbia, during an interview on Friday, Oct. 13.
Photographer: Ting Shen/BloombergWashington, DC, Mayor Muriel Bowser is calling on the federal government to do more with empty office buildings in the nation’s capital.
Since January, Bowser has urged the Biden administration to either require that most federal workers return to their offices “most of the time,” or “get a plan” for unused office space. Almost ten months later, even after President Joe Biden issued a memo to his cabinet calling for staffers to return to their offices, she lamented that sprawling federal office complexes remain underused as the city awaits more concrete federal action.