Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs

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Witness Testimony

Statement of James R. McKay

Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs

"Deteriorating Buildings and Wasted Opportunities: The Need for Federal Real Property Reform"

October, 01 2003

Madam Chairman and Members of the Committee, I would like to take just a couple of minutes to explain the current situation at St. Elizabeths and then begin a slide presentation. Although the District’s personnel have vacated the West Campus, a substantial amount of District property remains, including patient records, employment files, billing records, personal items, and furniture. Subsequent to the start of our investigation, the District, GSA, and HHS signed an agreement to provide for the removal of the District’s remaining items.

After the removal of all District items from the West Campus is complete, HHS and GSA plan to begin mothballing the buildings in compliance with standards set by the Secretary of the Interior. “Mothballing” is the process by which a building is deactivated and temporarily sealed to protect it from the elements and to secure it from vandalism. Estimates of the cost to complete the mothballing of the entire West Campus vary. But, according to a February 2003 estimate provided to GSA, the cost will be at least $18 million, or double an estimate found in a GAO Report from just two years earlier.

We would now like to begin a slide presentation that shows the conditions in which we found St. Elizabeths during our five visits to the West Campus.

[Power Point Presentation]

Moving the West Campus from a mothballed state to productive use is likely to be an extremely expensive undertaking. As discussed earlier, the property is a National Historic Landmark and most of the buildings have to be preserved. The 1985 Physical Plant Audit of St. Elizabeths estimated the cost of renovating both campuses of St. Elizabeths at $66-69 million plus the cost of hazardous materials removal. Later, a 1993 estimate, which assumed that 52% of the West Campus would continue to be used for the District’s mental health services with the remainder adapted for other institutional-type uses, retail facilities, and support buildings, assessed this cost to be as high as $116 to $128 million. The current cost to renovate the West Campus is likely to run much higher due to its accelerated deterioration. Nearly every building on the West Campus has severely deteriorated and almost all of the buildings will require lead and asbestos remediation. They will also need to have their heating and air conditioning systems completely replaced. As a result, GSA has estimated that it will cost between $400-$450 per square foot to bring St. Elizabeths to normal occupancy levels and in a manner that complies with the Secretary of the Interior’s Standard for Historic Properties. If this estimate proves to be consistent across the West Campus’s 1.1 million square feet, restoring it can be expected to cost between $440 and $495 million.

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Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
340 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510