Vacant & underutilized buildings

by Nicolas Parasie

WASHINGTON - The General Accounting Office reported in August that the federal government owns four sites in Maine that are either "vacant" or "underutilized." Sen. Susan Collins from Maine said this is a costly situation that needs to be dealt with.

During a Senate Governmental Affairs Committee hearing on Wednesday, Collins, who chairs the committee, said that "such properties are costly to maintain" and "could be put to more cost-beneficial uses."

Across the country, according to the report, the federal government owns 927 properties containing more than 2,000 acres of land and 32.1 million square feet of vacant or underutilized space.

Though this is only a small portion of the more than 3 billion square feet of building space, worth about $328 billion, that the government owns, Collins said "the federal government spends millions of dollars each year to maintain empty buildings. This is government waste, plain and simple."

Included in the GAO report are 51 acres of land in Scarborough and 1 acre in Eastport that are considered vacant. The report also said that at the Veterans Affairs Medical and Regional Office Center in Togus, more than half of the 55,000 square feet of "administrative space" is vacant and more than 6,000 square feet of living quarters are unoccupied.

But Jack Sims, director of the Togus center, said the figures are a year old and do not represent the current situation.

The living facilities are indeed vacant, he said in an interview, but that is because the occupants were required to leave while the center removes lead paint for which it was fined this summer. Sims said that once that problem is taken care of, the facilities will be occupied again.

As for the large amount of vacant office space, Sims said, that has been an "ongoing concern" and the center is working to convert some of it into clinical space.

According to Andrea Hofelich, spokeswoman for the Governmental Affairs Committee, the U.S. Postal Service purchased the 51 acres in Scarborough for development of a new Portland/Southern Maine processing and distribution center. It also bought the 1-acre site in Eastport to expand the main post office there.

The fourth building in Maine is at the Agriculture Department's animal and plant inspection site in Houlton, where, according to the report, 37 percent of the space was vacant.

Anne Hilleary, a senior analyst for the GAO, acknowledged that use of the spaces might have increased and the report's figures might be outdated by now.

"Given the uniqueness of these cases of vacant and underutilized properties, it is really hard to make sweeping generalizations about the plans agencies may or not have," she said.

Nevertheless, Collins said the report, which she requested along with Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Me., and others, indicates a nationwide problem.