Dive Brief:
- The U.S. General Services Administration has put out a request for qualifications for a firm that wants to perform construction and development work and be paid with the titles to two buildings in southwest Washington.
- The contractor would get the GSA Regional Office Building and one called the Cotton Annex while helping fit 1,500 employees into GSA's headquarters building and renovating as many as three buildings on the former St. Elizabeth's Hospital campus in D.C.'s Anacostia neighborhood.
- The building-for-work swap idea grew out of a request GSA made last year for ideas from the development community about innovative ways to accomplish some of its goals.
Dive Insight:
Before there was a federal bureaucracy and taxes to support it, there was bartering. It worked before, so why not now? No word on how one of the other three-letter agencies – the IRS – will treat such a deal.