Norton Calls on GSA for Plan to Use Long-Vacant Webster School, to Stop Wasting Taxpayer Funds

WASHINGTON, DC – Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) last week sent a letter to U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) Acting Administrator Dan Tangherlini asking for a specific plan, within 60 days, to either use the Webster School, a valuable but long-underutilized and vacant GSA property in the District of Columbia, for a new government tenant or to dispose of it. The letter calls the acting administrator's attention to what Norton said has been a GSA pattern of failing to take action to make use of valuable federal properties here or to dispose of them for redevelopment by the private sector. Norton called the Webster School, located in midtown at 940 H St. NW, to GSA's attention at a GSA oversight hearing in March 2012. No plan to either use or dispose of the property has been forthcoming, however. Norton, in her letter, pointed to a parallel between the Webster School and an underutilized property at 49 L St. SE that was the subject of a recent hearing held by the Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Government Operations, on which Norton serves. "The Webster School delay, along with 49 L St., shows a GSA pattern that I hope you can bring to an end," Norton wrote in her letter.

Published: June 4, 2013