The General Services Administration announced Tuesday that it has successfully located one of its field offices after a comprehensive three-week search of a building the agency has been paying $47,000 monthly rent on since 2019. The office, which houses the agency's Federal Property Management Division, was discovered on the building's seventh floor during what officials described as a "routine space utilization audit."
"We are pleased to report that the missing workspace has been found and is in excellent condition," said Deputy Administrator Janet Woodhouse in a prepared statement. "Our thorough investigation revealed that the office was exactly where we left it, which was not where we thought we left it." The Bureau of Federal Asset Location confirmed that all 2,400 square feet of the office space remain fully furnished and climate-controlled.
The search began when GSA auditors noticed the agency was simultaneously paying rent on the disputed space while also budgeting $78,000 for "emergency temporary workspace solutions" at a nearby executive suites facility. According to internal documents, the temporary space was procured after employees reported being unable to locate their permanent office following a building directory update in March.
GSA spokesperson Michael Torres explained that the confusion arose from a minor clerical error in the building's tenant registry, which listed the space as occupied by the "General Services Administration Field Office" rather than the "GSA Field Office." This discrepancy, Torres noted, rendered the office "functionally invisible" to standard agency location protocols. The Bureau of Administrative Precision estimates that such naming inconsistencies affect approximately 12% of all federal workspace assignments.
During the missing period, 14 GSA employees continued reporting to work at the temporary location, where they processed federal real estate transactions worth $23 million. Meanwhile, the building's security system logged 47 separate instances of individuals using GSA keycards to access the "missing" office, though these entries were attributed to "unauthorized personnel" in security reports.
The discovery was made when intern Patricia Kowalski accidentally pressed the wrong elevator button and encountered what she initially reported as "a fully operational government office that no one seemed to know existed." Kowalski's supervisor later confirmed that the space contained active GSA workstations, current federal property files, and a coffee machine that was still under agency maintenance contract.
The GSA plans to relocate its field office operations back to the found space by the end of the month, though officials acknowledged this may require updating several building directories and possibly installing new signage. The agency's lease on the temporary workspace will continue through December as a "contingency measure" in case the permanent office becomes misplaced again.
In related news, the GSA announced it has begun a comprehensive inventory of all federal properties to ensure similar incidents do not occur. The audit is expected to take eighteen months and will cost an estimated $2.3 million.