The reports received demonstrate that federal agencies accept these principles of location, reuse, and sharing their history with the public. GSA noted it has found that opportunities to lease space in nonfederal historic buildings most commonly arise when federal agency space requirements are modest enough to be accommodated in a historic building. If an agency needs more space and federally owned facilities are not available, this usually requires leasing in contemporary buildings or new construction. Many GSA leases in commercial historic buildings are located in rural towns or small cities where rental rates for leased office space are low compared to rates for office space in metropolitan areas. One urban location where leases in historic buildings cost-effectively supplement federally owned space is Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In 2016, GSA’s Mid-Atlantic regional headquarters relocated to the historic mid-century Rohm and Haas Headquarters building near Independence Mall. After redesigning the leased workspace to reduce its headquarters footprint, GSA successfully backfilled the unoccupied space by relocating Census and VA offices from expiring leases in non-historic buildings to the Rohm and Haas Building. Concurrently, Health and Human Services downsized from a lease of 102,231 usable square-feet in the historic Public Ledger Building to 79,772 usable square-feet vacated by GSA’s regional headquarters in the nearby historic Strawbridge and Clothier Building. A longtime shopping destination occupying 2.1-acres in the heart of the city’s retail district, the historic department store building features a helipad, patios, marble lobby, and 12-15-foot ceilings. Most responding agencies promote their historic properties where consistent with agency missions, and some agencies, like the NPS, FS, and BLM, include heritage tourism in their mission and land management strategies. Federal agencies responding provided examples that demonstrate a broad range of innovative and enduring ways they contribute to local communities and provide opportunities for the interested public to learn about the nation’s collective history. Many historic buildings and structures have been modified to serve successive programs and missions. Consistent with the ACHP’s guidance on highly technical and scientific historic properties (http://www.achp.gov/docs/consideration-highly-technical-scientific-facilities.pdf ) and NPS guidance on special categories of resources such as movable and aviation historic properties, federal agencies view this continual process of modification to be a character- defining feature of historic properties. Physical and operational security requirements impact the management of federally owned historic properties. In those cases, these considerations limit the opportunities for a federal agency to provide public access to its facilities.
NASA reports it is considerably less expensive to modify an existing building or structure than it is to construct new. NASA estimates 93 percent of its identified historic properties are in active use either by NASA or a tenant, and approximately 10 percent of historic properties are leased.
The qualifiers “consistent with agency mission” and “conflicts with agency mission” can have major effects on agency use of, and public access to, federal historic properties. Some reporting agencies like DHS said the nature of their missions or function of historic properties precluded active contributions to tourism or the local economy. Smaller agencies with very specific missions (e.g., Department of Labor, National Institute of Standards and Technology, BOP) faced the greatest challenge in this regard. They noted that by virtue of their presence in a community they were contributing to the local economy through employment and the acquisition of goods and services, but that opportunities for heritage tourism or visitation were limited at best. DHS said heritage tourism was not consistent with its mission or the use
46 | IN A SPIRIT OF STEWARDSHIP: A REPORT ON FEDERAL HISTORIC PROPERTY MANAGEMENT 2018
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