Report: Trump And Musk Want To Sell Off Two Sf Federal Buildings

There are reports that the Trump administration plans to shutter and sell off hundreds of US federal buildings around the country, including two in SF. It’s being sold as “efficiency,” but is probably just another middle finger to SF and Nancy Pelosi.

The tech publication Wired has been doing some bang-up reporting in the early days of President Trump partnering with Elon Musk on this so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). As Wired has uncovered, the department has made a series of embarrassing mistakes and spewed absolute falsehoods about costs they’re supposedly cutting.

Wired’s latest bombshell on the topic dropped last week, when that outlet reported that the federal governent's General Services Administration (GSA) has been instructed by its new Musk-installed cronies to sell off more than 500 US federal government buildings across the US. That report noted that federal buildings in Boston, Chicago, and Jackson, Tennessee could all be put on the selling block.

Now today’s Chronicle has some follow-up reporting that two federal buildings in San Francisco are also potentially being put up for sale. These would be the Speaker Nancy Pelosi Federal Building at Seventh and Mission streets, and the 50 United Nations Plaza Federal Office Building near the Civic Center BART station.  

The Chronicle apparently obtained an internal GSA memo that identified these two SF buildings as being among roughly a dozen California federal buildings considered “non-core” assets, and candidates to be sold off. These also include the Leo J. Ryan Federal Building in San Bruno, plus three federal buildings in Sacramento and six in Los Angeles.

It does not take a genius to figure out that some of these buildings slated for possible sale are named after prominent Democrats. The Seventh and Mission federal building was renamed for Nancy Pelosi in 2023, right about the time when workers there were told to work from home because of the extremely unsafe, South of Market-type street blight around the building. The building has since been a punching bag for Republicans who have demanded the place be closed, mostly just because it's in San Francisco.  

The Chronicle got a statement from GSA spokesperson Mary Simms, who said it would be “too early to speculate” on whether these buildings would be sold, but added that the agency was “taking very seriously the priority to continue to do … the streamlining that we are designated to do.”

But the Chron also had a source who was was in a meeting with new GSA Technology Transformation Services director (and former Tesla engineer) Thomas Shedd, who reportedly told employees of his plans to remove “old buildings” with “high liabilities” owned by the federal government “in favor of newer leased buildings.” Shedd also added that he preferred government offices that “will look a lot like a normal software business.”

Still, the question Trump and Musk may not be asking themselves is… Can they even sell these buildings without incurring a significant loss? In this economy?

“No investor would have built this building,” developer Andy Ball, who was with Webcor when they did concrete work on the Pelosi building when it was built in the late 2000s, told the Chronicle. “In this market, it will represent the greatest difference between cost to build and its sale value.”

In other words, if it were sold, it would likely be at a giant loss.

Musk’s lackeys renting space in “newer leased buildings,” rather than buildings the government already owns, seems like the opposite of efficiency. But Trump and Musk may be more motivated to put the screws to San Francisco and settle political scores, which is what this is probably all about anyway.

Related: Trump Orders Presidio Trust 'Eliminated' But That May Not Happen [SFist]

Image: Eric in SF via Wikimedia Commons