A placard inside the National Science Foundation headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia, on Wednesday morning declared the building the “new home” of another agency, the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
At a press conference in that building, HUD Secretary Scott Turner announced his department was moving in to start a new “golden age.”
The announcement blindsided NSF employees who received an all-staff email about the move an hour before the news conference that offered no clue about where they were going.
“The General Services Administration (GSA), who manages all federal properties, including our leased building, has informed us that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) will be moving into our current space in the coming months,” wrote Brian Stone — who took the helm of NSF in April when its director resigned — in a message to science foundation employees Wednesday morning.
Stone said GSA planned for the science agency to move “to another building in the Washington, D.C. area in the near future” and promised to send more details as soon as they were available.
The White House did not respond to requests for comment. An NSF spokesperson declined to comment Wednesday.
The science agency — whose broad research funding includes projects at universities, nonprofits and industry — announced earlier this year that it was terminating awards “that are not aligned with NSF’s priorities.”
Turner heralded the HUD relocation as a boon for the department during the news conference, where he was joined by Virginia Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin and Michael Peters, commissioner of the Public Buildings Service at GSA. No NSF officials spoke.
The Trump administration has been pushing to offload excess government office space as part of a broad effort to shrink the federal workforce. HUD and the General Services Administration announced in April that HUD wanted to move out of its current home, the Robert C. Weaver Federal Building near L’Enfant Plaza in Washington.
That building, which opened in 1968, has more than $500 million in deferred maintenance and modernization needs, GSA said. The building would be at half of its capacity with every HUD staffer at headquarters, according to GSA.
NSF moved into its Alexandria office from Arlington, Virginia’s Ballston area in 2017.
‘We don’t have a plan yet’
Turner and Peters said Wednesday they don’t know about the next moves for NSF. More than 1,833 NSF staffers work in the building, according to an employee union.
HUD is “well aware of our colleagues here at NSF” and wants to be “very gracious” during the transition, Turner said.
Pressed by reporters about the plan for NSF following the news conference, Peters said, “We don’t have a plan yet.”
Word of the HUD relocation surfaced Tuesday, when a union representing NSF employees alerted staff of the expected announcement.
An NSF employee said Tuesday that they had “literally zero idea” the move was coming until word began circulating Tuesday evening.
Inside the building Wednesday morning, boos and “N-S-F” chants could be heard from the lobby as the news conference continued on the floor above.
“This day is one for the history books,” one NSF employee told a reporter.
Youngkin said he was “incredibly committed” to keeping NSF in Virginia. “We had multiple sites that we presented to GSA for HUD, and we’re just dusting those off and are going to present them for NSF,” the governor said.
NSF employees and Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California, the top Democrat on the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, assailed the announcement.
The NSF employee union said in a press release Tuesday that it was told that plans for the HUD headquarters include a dedicated executive suite for the secretary on the 19th floor, the construction of an executive dining room, reserved parking spaces for the secretary’s cars, exclusive use of an elevator for the secretary and a space dedicated to hosting the secretary’s executive assistants on the 18th floor.
Turner rebuffed accusations that he was seeking posher accommodations. “I didn’t come to government to get nice things,” Turner said. “This is about the HUD employees, this is not about me.”
In a statement, Lofgren said the “Trump administration’s egregious, corrupt, and disgraceful abuse of power continues, this time by kicking dedicated scientists out of their building so HUD Secretary Turner can have a penthouse dining suite.”
She added, “Where will NSF staff go? What is the Trump administration’s plan?”