GENERAL SERVICES

ADMINISTRATION

Secret Service

Uniformed Division

Lease

United States General Accounting Office

GAO Report to Congressional Requester

House of Representatives

September 1999

GAO/GGD-99-153

United States General Accounting Office General Government Division

Washington, D.C. 20548

Page 1 GAO/GGD-99-153 Secret Service Uniformed Division Lease

B-283063

September 7, 1999

The Honorable Bob Franks, Chairman

Subcommittee on Economic Development,

Public Buildings, Hazardous Materials and

Pipeline Transportation

Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure

House of Representatives

Dear Mr. Chairman:

This report responds to your request concerning new leased space

acquired for the Secret Service’s Uniformed Division (SSUD) at 1111 18th

Street, N.W., Washington, D.C., by the Public Buildings Service (PBS) of

the General Services Administration (GSA). Specifically, you asked us to

assess the circumstances that resulted in this lease being awarded without

PBS’ first submitting a prospectus for the project to GSA’s Senate and

House authorizing committees, as provided for by law and PBS’ policy and

procedures. Appendix I provides a chronology of events in the acquisition

of the SSUD lease.

A lack of adequate internal controls over the leasing process at GSA’s

National Capital Region (NCR) resulted in PBS’ awarding a lease for SSUD

on August 5, 1998, above the prospectus dollar threshold without first

preparing and submitting a prospectus for the lease to GSA’s Senate and

House authorizing committees. First, there was confusion about the costs

that were to be considered in determining whether a prospectus was

needed. Specific written guidance on how to calculate the cost did not

exist. Second, although the space requirements increased about 40

percentfrom about 50,000 square feet to about 70,000 square

feetduring the acquisition process, procedures did not call for the

revalidation of the decision that a prospectus was not needed when the

space requirements and/or market rental rates used to make the decision

changed during the acquisition process.

After a congressional staffer asked questions about the lease on August 31,

1998, NCR officials reviewed the award of the lease and determined that a

prospectus should have been prepared and submitted to GSA’s Senate and

House authorizing committees as provided for in section 7(a) of the Public

Buildings Act of 1959, as amended, 40 U.S.C. 606(a), and PBS’ policy and

procedures. Subsequently, NCR has instituted a new policy requiring its

Results in Brief
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Portfolio Management Division to verify all leases before they are

awarded. Still, GSA has not developed specific guidance on how to

calculate the cost to be used to determine whether a prospectus should be

prepared, nor has GSA determined that it needs to revalidate prospectus

decisions when space requirements or market rental rates change. We

believe that these internal control weaknesses need to be corrected and

are recommending that actions be taken to address these issues.

On August 5, 1998, PBS entered into a lease with Jack I. Bender & Sons,

General Partnership to provide lease space and parking for SSUD at an

annual net rent of $2,129,461. This figure exceeded the prospectus

threshold of $1.93 million for fiscal year 2000, the year in which occupancy

is to commence. A prospectus was not submitted to GSA’s Senate and

House authorizing committees at the time the lease was signed.

As the federal government’s primary real estate agent, GSA, through PBS,

provides space for agencies in federally owned buildings or by leasing

space in privately owned buildings. NCR is responsible for providing space

for agencies in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area.

Pursuant to section 210(h)(1) of the Federal Property and Administrative

Services Act of 1949, as amended, 40 U.S.C. 490(h), the Administrator of

GSA is authorized to enter into lease agreements for periods of up to 20

years on such terms as the Administrator deems to be in the interest of the

United States and necessary for the accommodation of federal agencies.

Section 7(a) of the Public Buildings Act of 1959, as amended, 40 U.S.C.

606(a), among other things provides for a detailed project description,

called a prospectus, containing a project cost estimate and justification to

be submitted to GSA’s Senate and House authorizing committees. A

prospectus is (1) called for if the average annual rental of a lease is

expected to exceed the prospectus threshold, as specified in the statute,

and (2) adjusted by GSA annually, as authorized by the statute, to reflect

changes in costs during the preceding year.1

Annually, the PBS National Office issues a Capital Investment and Leasing

Program call asking all GSA regional offices to submit their prospectuslevel projects. Each year the National Office provides the regions with the

prospectus-level threshold and general guidance on preparing

prospectuses. The National Office reviews the prospectuses submitted by

the regions and the prospectuses that it approves are then consolidated

 

1

The actual prospectus thresholds for fiscal years 1998, 1999, and 2000 were $1.81 million, $1.89 million,

and $1.93 million, respectively.

Background
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into GSA’s Capital Improvement and Leasing Program and submitted to

the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for approval. Once OMB

approves the program, it is sent to GSA’s authorizing committees. PBS

stated that its policy since 1972 has been not to enter into any lease

agreement if the annual rental exceeds the prospectus threshold unless the

authorizing committees have approved a prospectus.

At your request, we assessed the circumstances surrounding the award of

the SSUD lease. As agreed, we did not evaluate NCR’s overall process for

identifying prospectus-level leases or for preparing prospectuses.

To determine the circumstances surrounding the award of the lease for

SSUD, we spoke with the cognizant NCR officials in the Regional

Counsel’s Office, Portfolio Management Division, and Property Acquisition

and Realty Services Division; reviewed GSA’s leasing policies and

procedures; and discussed policy issues and guidance provided to regional

offices with officials in PBS. We also spoke with two former NCR

staffers—the original contracting officer for the SSUD lease and an

attorney from the Regional Counsel’s Office—since both played significant

roles in this acquisition.

We reviewed the contract file for the lease to determine the acquisition

process used and the critical decision points. Only limited documentation

was available to support some of what we considered to be the critical

decisions, such as the initial decision that this action was not a prospectuslevel acquisition. Thus, some of the information being provided in this

report is based on what current and former GSA officials remembered

about events that occurred up to 3 years ago. We also obtained information

on actions taken by NCR to help prevent prospectus-level leases from

being awarded without a prospectus being prepared.

Further, we obtained and reviewed GSA’s policies and guidance related to

the preparation of lease prospectuses, and we verified that the rental-ofspace account in the Federal Buildings Fund (FBF) had sufficient

appropriated funds to cover the obligation for the SSUD lease. We

discussed the specifics of the SSUD lease with an official in PBS’ Office of

Portfolio Management. We also contacted regional officials in 9 of GSA’s

10 other regions to determine whether they had guidance in place

specifying how to calculate the lease costs to be used to determine if a

prospectus is needed for an acquisition, and whether the decision that a

lease is not prospectus-level is revalidated when space requirements or

market rental rates change. We were unable to contact the appropriate

official in the remaining GSA region in time for inclusion in this report.

Scope and

Methodology
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We did our work between March and July, 1999, in accordance with

generally accepted government auditing standards. On July 26, 1999, we

requested comments on a draft of this report from the Administrator of

GSA. GSA’s written comments are discussed near the end of this letter.

In NCR, it is initially the Portfolio Management Division’s responsibility to

review expiring leases to identify new leases that might be above the

prospectus threshold and to prepare the prospectuses for those leases. In

the case of the SSUD lease, there was no indication that Portfolio

Management identified the lease as potentially needing a prospectus.

According to the contracting officer, who has since left GSA, even though

Portfolio Management had not identified this lease as needing a

prospectus, when she began working on the SSUD lease in April 1996, she

confirmed her expectation that the lease would be below the prospectus

threshold. Her estimate of the lease costs was made by multiplying the

expected market rental rate ($29 to $30 per square foot) by the estimated

space requirement (50,000 square feet). This calculation resulted in an

estimated total rent of $1.45 million to $1.5 million, which was below the

fiscal year 1998 prospectus threshold initially being used for this lease of

$1.81 million. Therefore, she went forward with the acquisition process as

a nonprospectus-level lease.

In the contract file, we found documents showing that early in the

acquisition process there was information available indicating that the

SSUD lease could be closer to the fiscal year 1998 prospectus threshold. A

letter, dated June 27, 1996, to NCR from a Secret Service official estimated

that SSUD would need 55,000 to 60,000 square feet of space. Using the

contracting officer’s estimated market rental rate ($29 to $30 per square

foot), the dollar range of $1.6 million to $1.8 million for that much space

would have been much closer to the fiscal year 1998 prospectus threshold.

Although the actual space requirement had not yet been determined, it

appears to us that PBS should have recognized that if the space

requirement or rental rate were higher than expected, the lease could

possibly exceed the fiscal year 1998 prospectus threshold.

When the Solicitation for Offers (SFO) was issued in November 1997, it

stated that SSUD required 69,500 to 72,250 rentable square feet of office

and related space and 78 parking spaces. The SFO stated that this was not

a prospectus-level lease. Therefore, to be considered, any offer must be

below the prospectus threshold. There was nothing in the contract file to

indicate that a check had been done after SSUD’s space requirements were

finalized to verify that NCR could still expect lease offers for this project to

The Lease Was

Awarded Without

Adequate Evaluation

of the Need for a

Prospectus
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Page 5 GAO/GGD-99-153 Secret Service Uniformed Division Lease

be below the prospectus threshold. Because of the increase in space needs

over SSUD’s June 1996 estimate, it would seem prudent to have done

another prospectus-level calculation before issuing the SFO. Had this

calculation been done using the actual minimum space requirement in the

SFO (69,500 square feet) times the low end of the estimated market rental

rate ($29) that the contracting officer had initially used, the estimated

annual rent would have been about $2.02 million. This amount exceeded

both the fiscal year 1998 prospectus threshold of $1.81 million that was

initially used for this lease and the fiscal year 2000 threshold of $1.93

million that was later used. We believe that if an update of the prospectus

calculation had been done at this point, the need to reevaluate the

prospectus decision would have been apparent to NCR.

Early in 1998, there were three offerors competing for the SSUD lease.

About the time that NCR received the best and final offers, the original

contracting officer left GSA. When the new contracting officer took over

responsibility for the SSUD lease, he raised the question about the need for

a prospectus on the basis of the offers received. In May 1998, the

contracting officer reopened negotiations on the lease to clarify the

calculation for determining compliance with the prospectus threshold.

Before this time, there was no indication in the contract files that the

offerors had been informed about how to calculate whether their offers

would comply with the SFO requirement that the offer be below the

prospectus threshold.

In an attempt to clarify how to calculate the prospectus threshold, the

contracting officer sent the offerors two letters in May 1998. His first letter,

on May 8, 1998, specified that parking, operating expenses, and the cost of

amortizing the tenant allowance for above standard requirements should

be subtracted from the total full-service rental rate to determine if the offer

would be below the prospectus threshold. A week later, on May 15, 1998,

the contracting officer sent the offerors a second letter, amending the May

8 letter. This letter stated that only operating expenses and any

concessions offered to the government should be subtracted from the total

full-service rental rate when determining compliance with the prospectus

threshold. Officials at the National Office and in NCR’s Portfolio

Management Division, stated the same calculation mentioned in the May

15 letter as the correct way to determine if an offer met the prospectus

threshold.

After receiving these letters from the contracting officer, attorneys for two

of the offerors expressed concerns about the changes in the calculation

being used to determine prospectus compliance at such a late stage in the
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process. Before the new contracting officer reopened the negotiations,

correspondence between the offerors and NCR indicated that the offerors

had been informed or led to believe that their offers met the basic

requirements for the acquisition, including compliance with the

requirement that their offers be below the prospectus threshold amount.

Ultimately, none of the offers met that requirement on the basis of the

calculation provided in the May 15 letter.

The NCR officials involved with this lease said that there were discussions

about how to respond to the letters from the offerors’ attorneys and how

to proceed with the acquisition. The officials said that their decision to try

to complete this acquisition without a prospectus was based on the (1)

time already invested in this acquisition, (2) concerns raised by the

offerors’ attorneys, and (3) need to award the lease in time for the new

space to be ready when SSUD’s current lease expires in February 2000. We

found little written documentation in the contract files of the discussions

that were held and the decisions made regarding the SSUD lease. The

contracting officer said that he consulted primarily with an attorney in the

Regional Counsel’s Office on this matter. By telephone and E-mail, the

attorney sought input from both the National Office and regional Portfolio

Management officials. However, a consensus opinion on how to proceed

with this lease was never developed.

It appears that the contracting officer acted on advice from the attorney

when he issued an amendment to the SFO in July 1998 informing the

offerors that (1) the calculation for determining prospectus compliance

was the aggregate cost of the contract, minus operating expenses, minus

any tenant improvement allowance, and divided by the 20-year term of the

lease and (2) the fiscal year 2000 prospectus threshold of $1.93 million

would be used for this lease. According to the attorney, who has since left

GSA, his advice was based on his understanding and interpretation of the

guidance he received from various sources. Specifically, he said he advised

the contracting officer that the cost of SSUD’s above standard tenant

requirements could be excluded from the prospectus calculation on the

basis of discussions with his supervisor and his interpretation of a 1990

Comptroller General decision.2

However, the Comptroller General decision stated that the cost of

“specials” (i.e., items above standard tenant requirements) could be

excluded from the prospectus calculation because GSA elected to pay for

 

2

Peter N .G. Schwartz Companies Judiciary Square Limited Partnership, B-239007.3, Oct. 31, 1990, 90-2

CGPD 353.
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the specials on a lump-sum basis from the tenant agency’s appropriation.

The general rule relating to above standard requirements is that if the costs

are paid on a lump-sum basis, they are not included in the annual net rent

payment. But, if the costs are amortized in the lease, they are included in

the annual net rent payment. In the case of SSUD, it was clear early in the

acquisition process that the cost of the above standard tenant

requirements would be amortized over the term of the lease because the

Secret Service did not have the funds available to pay for these costs by

lump-sum payment.

The attorney advised the contracting officer to use the fiscal year 2000

threshold because it will be the year when the lease payments begin. The

contracting officer confirmed that this was consistent with the oral

guidance provided by Portfolio Management in the National Office.

The contracting officer ultimately set July 10, 1998, as the date for final

revisions to the offers for the SSUD lease, and two final offers were

received. The third offeror withdrew because it said that it could not meet

the economic requirements specified in the amended SFO. Only one of the

offers actually fell below the prospectus threshold as defined in the July

1998 amendment to the SFO. According to the contracting officer, once it

was determined that only one offer met the requirements, he had the

attorney in the Regional Counsel’s Office, in accordance with NCR’s

practice, review and concur in the lease award before it was awarded. The

Budget Office also reviewed the lease as an operating lease and certified

that funds were available for the award. The contracting officer signed the

SSUD lease for GSA on August 5, 1998.

NCR reviewed this acquisition after the lease was awarded and questions

were raised by a congressional staffer about whether it should have had a

prospectus. According to an NCR official, it is GSA’s policy to prepare

lease prospectuses for all leases that exceed the prospectus threshold.

NCR concluded that the SSUD lease did exceed the prospectus threshold,

and that a prospectus should have been prepared in this case. NCR then

prepared a prospectus and submitted it to GSA’s authorizing committees

on September 25, 1998. During NCR’s review of this lease, it also

determined that while the lease was treated as an operating lease when it

was awarded, it was in fact a capital lease.3

 As a result, about $22 million in

budget authority had to be counted against GSA’s fiscal year 1998 rental-ofspace account for the lease. We verified that at the time the SSUD lease

 

3

According to OMB Circular A-11, a capital lease is “one that transfers substantially all the benefits and

risks inherent in the ownerhip of the property” to the lessee.

A Prospectus Should

Have Been Prepared

for the SSUD Lease
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was signed, there were sufficient unobligated funds in the FBF rental-ofspace account to cover the obligation.

NCR officials said that in their opinions, awarding the SSUD lease without

a prospectus resulted from NCR employees’ “creatively” interpreting the

prospectus threshold. According to a senior NCR official, this action was

in response to the specific circumstances of this lease and does not

indicate that there is a systemic problem within NCR. Although we did not

evaluate NCR’s overall process to determine if there were systemic

problems, we found no specific written PBS guidance on what costs are to

be included in the calculation to determine whether a lease will need a

prospectus. Also, NCR’s internal controls were not sufficient to ensure that

the SSUD lease was correctly identified as prospectus-level, and that a

prospectus was prepared and submitted to GSA’s authorizing committees

before the lease’s award.

To strengthen the internal controls, on October 26, 1998, NCR began

requiring the Portfolio Management Division to verify all leases before they

are awarded. The staff was told that “this verification must be made in

sufficient time prior to award so that a different course of action (other

than making an award) is available.” However, there still is no written

guidance on how to calculate the costs that should be used to determine if

a lease is prospectus-level or not. Also, there is still no requirement to

revalidate the prospectus decision when space requirements and/or

market rental rates change during the course of the acquisition.

We spoke with officials in 9 of GSA’s 10 other regional offices4

 to ask

whether they had guidance in place specifying how to calculate if a

prospectus is needed for a lease, and if they revalidate the decision that a

lease is not prospectus-level when space requirements or market rental

rates change. None of the officials with whom we spoke said they

currently had specific written guidance to follow when determining if a

lease prospectus was needed beyond the general guidance provided by the

National Office. However, some of the officials said that the old leasing

handbook, which is no longer used as guidance, specified that when

determining whether a lease was prospectus-level, operating expenses

should be subtracted from the total rent. Several officials said that it would

be helpful to have specific written guidance on what costs to include and

exclude when determining if a lease is expected to exceed the prospectus

threshold.

 

4

We did not speak with the appropriate official in the other regional office in time for inclusion in this

report.

Similar Internal

Control Weaknesses

Reported in Other GSA

Regions
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Page 9 GAO/GGD-99-153 Secret Service Uniformed Division Lease

When we asked, these nine regional officials said they also did not

specifically require that the decision that a lease was not prospectus-level

be documented or revalidated when space requirements or market rental

rates change. However, many of the officials said that this recheck is

inherent in the process. The officials said that when the final offers are

received, if those offers are above the prospectus threshold, the region

cannot and does not go forward with the award.

The lack of adequate internal controls over the leasing process at NCR

resulted in PBS’ signing a prospectus-level lease for the SSUD space on

August 5, 1998, without first preparing and submitting a prospectus for the

lease to GSA’s authorizing committees. While NCR has instituted a new

policy requiring its Portfolio Management Division to verify all leases

before they are awarded, written guidance on how to calculate the average

annual rental to be used to determine whether a prospectus is needed still

does not exist. Also, NCR still does not require that the decision that a

lease is not prospectus-level be documented when that initial decision is

made, or that the decision be revalidated and documented when one or

both of the factors on which such a decision is basedagency space

requirements and market rental rateschange. Officials in nine other GSA

regions with whom we spoke said that written guidance on how to

calculate the average annual rental and a requirement to document and

revalidate decisions that a lease is not prospectus-level is also missing in

these regions.

We recommend that the Administrator of GSA direct the PBS

Commissioner to issue explicit written guidance defining the specific cost

elements that may be excluded from the total full-service rental rate when

calculating whether a prospectus should be prepared for a proposed lease.

This guidance should also cover the fiscal year threshold that should be

used for making this determination for a capital lease and for an operating

lease.

We also recommend that the Administrator of GSA direct the PBS

Commissioner to establish a requirement specifying that the decision that

a lease is below prospectus-level be documented and revalidated whenever

there is a change in one or both of the factors on which such a decision is

basedagency space requirements and market rental ratescould affect

the outcome of the decision on whether a prospectus would be required.

On August 20, 1999, we received written comments on a draft of this report

from PBS’ Commissioner. He said that the report accurately reflects the

Conclusions

Recommendations

Agency Comments
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factual circumstances surrounding the award of this lease. While the

Commissioner believes that the awarding of the SSUD lease without a

prospectus was an anomaly, he said that he agrees with our

recommendations that current written guidance is needed and has directed

his staff to prepare such guidance. The Commissioner’s letter is

reproduced in appendix II. In addition, an NCR official provided some

technical comments, which we incorporated as appropriate.

We are sending copies of this report to Representative Robert E. Wise,

Ranking Democratic Member of your Subcommittee; Senator John Chafee,

Chairman, and Senator Max S. Baucus, Ranking Minority Member, Senate

Committee on Environment and Public Works; the Honorable David J.

Barram, Administrator, GSA; Mr. Nelson B. Alcalde, Regional

Administrator, NCR, GSA; and to others upon request.

If you have any questions about this report, please call me or Ron King on

(202) 512-8387. Key contributors to this assignment were Maria Edelstein,

Shirley Bates, and Susan Michal-Smith.

Sincerely yours,

Bernard L. Ungar

Director, Government Business

 Operations Issues
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Page 12 GAO/GGD-99-153 Secret Service Uniformed Division Lease

Contents

1 Letter

Appendix I 14

Chronology of Events

on Secret Service

Uniformed Division

Lease

Appendix II 16

Comments From the

General Services

Administration

Table I.1: Chronology of Events on Secret Service

Uniformed Division Lease

14 Tables

Abbreviations

FBF Federal Buildings Fund

GSA General Services Administration

NCR National Capital Region

OMB Office of Management and Budget

PBS Public Buildings Service

SFO Solicitation for Offers

SSUD Secret Service Uniformed Division
Page 13 GAO/GGD-99-153 Secret Service Uniformed Division Lease
Appendix I

Chronology of Events on Secret Service

Uniformed Division Lease

Page 14 GAO/GGD-99-153 Secret Service Uniformed Division Lease

Table I.1 contains a chronology of major events that transpired in relation

to the award of the lease for the United States Secret Service Uniform

Division (SSUD).

Date Event

April 1996 The General Services Administration’s (GSA) National Capital Region (NCR) and SSUD

began discussing relocation from 1310 L Street.

June 1996 Secret Service provided NCR information on location requirements, generic security

standards, and estimated space needs (55,000 and 60,000 square feet) so NCR could

begin advertising the need for space to assess the properties that might be available for

lease.

November 1997 NCR issued Solicitation for Offers (SFO) seeking leased space for SSUD. Solicitation was

for a 20-year lease of between 69,500 and 72,250 rentable square feet with 63,408 to

64,500 occupiable square feet of space. The SFO stated that this was not a prospectus

level procurement and thus the economics of any lease offer must be below the

prospectus threshold. (Note: the initial SFO did not specify the threshold amount or how

compliance with the prospectus requirement would be calculated.) Initial offers were due

to NCR January 20, 1998.

January 1998 Four offers were submitted on the basis of NCR’s SFO. Offers were submitted by Jack I.

Bender & Sons, General Partnership c/o Blake Construction, Inc.; 17 H Associates L.P.

and 17 H II Limited Partnership c/o Carr America; Associated General Contractors c/o

Dickstein Shapiro Morin & Oshinsky LLP; and 1920 L Street LLC c/o Leggat McCall

Properties.

February 1998 The offerors were given an opportunity to present their offers and were notified of the

areas in which their offers did not meet the requirements and were given the opportunity to

correct these areas. Representatives from 1920 L Street LLC did not attend a scheduled

meeting and failed to submit a best and final offer. Therefore, at this point there were

three remaining offerors.

March 1998 Original contracting officer left GSA to work for the Secret Service and a new contracting

officer took over the SSUD lease. The new contracting officer said that when he became

involved with the SSUD lease he saw the need for a prospectus.

May 8, 1998 Current contracting officer tried to clarify calculation for determining if offers meet the

prospectus threshold. Letter to offerors defined the calculation as the total full-service

rental rate, minus parking, minus operating expenses, and minus the cost of amortizing

the tenant improvement allowance. The letter also specified that using the above

calculation, the offers must not exceed the fiscal year 1998 prospectus threshold of $1.81

million.

May 15, 1998 Contracting officer sent another letter to the offerors amending the May 8, 1998, letter. In

this letter, the calculation for determining if offers meet the prospectus threshold was

defined as the total full-service rental rate, minus operating expenses, and minus any

concessions offered to the government. This letter also amended the prospectus

threshold to fiscal year 2000, which is $1.93 million.

Table I.1: Chronology of Events on Secret Service Uniformed Division Lease
Appendix I

Chronology of Events on Secret Service Uniformed Division Lease

Page 15 GAO/GGD-99-153 Secret Service Uniformed Division Lease

Date Event

May 20, 1998 Associated General Contractors of America withdrew from the competition for the SSUD

lease because it said that it could not meet the economic requirements. Attorneys for the

two remaining offerors, Jack I. Bender & Sons, General Partnership and 17 H Associates

L.P. and 17 H II Limited Partnership, both wrote letters to GSA expressing concerns about

the changes to the calculation for determining compliance with the prospectus threshold.

May - June, 1998 Internal NCR discussions about how to calculate compliance with the prospectus

threshold and which fiscal year to use for the threshold were held.

June 22, 1998 Amendment number 6 to the SFO issued stating that the prospectus threshold being used

for the SSUD lease is fiscal year 2000 ($1.93M) and the calculation for determining

prospectus compliance is the aggregate cost of the contract (including parking), minus

operating expenses and any tenant improvement allowance, and then divided by the 20-

year term of the lease.

July 1, 1998 Final amendment (number 7) to the SFO was issued setting July 10, 1998, as the date for

final revisions to offers.

July 20, 1998 Analysis done on offers, including initial offer submitted by Associated General

Contractors of America, found that only the offer from Jack I. Bender & Sons, General

Partnership met the prospectus threshold requirement as defined in amendment number 7

to the SFO.

August 5, 1998 GSA signed a 20-year lease with Jack I. Bender & Sons, General Partnership for 72,250

rentable (64,500 usable) square feet of space at 1111 18th Street, Washington, D.C.

August 31, 1998 A Senior Professional Staff Member for the Subcommittee on Economic Development,

Public Buildings, Hazardous Materials and Pipeline Transportation called NCR to ask

about the SSUD lease that was reported in the newspaper. He asked why the

Subcommittee had not seen a prospectus for the lease since the reported size and cost of

the lease appeared to be prospectus-level.

September 25, 1998 A prospectus for the SSUD lease at 1111 18th Street was prepared and transmitted to

GSA’s authorizing committees.

Source: GAO review of SSUD lease file.
Appendix II

Comments From the General Services

Administration

Page 16 GAO/GGD-99-153 Secret Service Uniformed Division Lease
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