A D.C. councilwoman successfully pulled off what the city’s Office of Property Management could not, or would not, do: She negotiated better terms in the new lease on the Metropolitan Police Department’s evidence warehouse.
In a meeting last week with the owners of the 98,039-square-foot facility at 2235 Shannon Place SE, Carol Schwartz, R-at large, won a stipulation that the price per square foot would not increase in May of next year, contrary to the deal OPM had accepted. The revised agreement will save the District more than $60,000.
“I don’t have time to do this all the time,” Schwartz, who has oversight of the property management agency, said Wednesday. “I want them to do a better job.”
The lease agreement between Curtis Properties Inc. and OPM, which the Council approved last month at Mayor Adrian Fenty’s urging, set the warehouse price at $11.81 per square foot through May 1, 2009, at which point it would jump to $12.50.
The police department is slated to move into a new, city-owned facility in 18 months.
The costly new lease was criticized by several Council members, as D.C. had paid the same amount on the warehouse, $2.69 per square foot, since 1994. The going rate for leased warehouse space in the Anacostia area is closer to $6 per square foot.
Robin-Eve Jasper, OPM’s acting director, acknowledged Wednesday her staff didn’t strive to reach a better deal. The agency is responsible for negotiating rents on some 3.76 million square feet of leased space citywide.
“It’s not clear that OPM wouldn’t have been able to,” Jasper said after her budget oversight hearing before Schwartz’s government operations committee. “[Schwartz] just took the initiative.”
City Administrator Dan Tangherlini told The Examiner that OPM, under Jasper’s direction, “continues to make improvements.”
“Is there room to grow? Of course,” Tangherlini said. “Could this be an instructive example? Absolutely.”
