1120 Vermont Avenue Associates, LLP

B-413019 Aug 01, 2016 Jump To VIEW DECISION DOWNLOADS RELATED PAGES GAO CONTACTS Highlights 1120 Vermont Avenue Associates, LLP, and 1125 15th Street, LLC, both located in Washington, D.C., protest the terms of request for lease proposals (RLP) No. 1DC2107, issued by the General Services Administration (GSA), Public Buildings Service (PBS), to lease office space for a federal tenant agency. The protesters contend that the RLP's specifications exceed the tenant agency's minimum needs and unduly restrict competition. The protesters also argue that the solicitation's price evaluation provisions will not permit GSA to determine the lowest-priced proposal and will disadvantage the incumbent lessor. We deny the protest. We deny the protest. View Decision DOCUMENT FOR PUBLIC RELEASE The decision issued on the date below was subject to a GAO Protective Order. This redacted version has been approved for public release. Decision Matter of:  1120 Vermont Avenue Associates, LLP; 1125 15th Street, LLC File:  B-413019 Date:  August 1, 2016 Mary Beth Bosco, Esq., Elizabeth N. Jochum, Esq., and Robert C. MacKichan, Jr., Esq., Holland & Knight LLP, for the protesters. Mikhail S. Petersen, Esq., and Edith L. Toms, Esq., General Services Administration, for the agency. Pedro E. Briones, Esq., and Noah B. Bleicher, Esq., Office of the General Counsel, GAO, participated in the preparation of the decision. DIGEST 1.  Protest that solicitation for lease of office space unduly restricts competition is denied where the agency demonstrates a reasonable basis for requiring 30‑foot column spacing and contiguous floor space. 2.  Protest of solicitation’s price evaluation provisions is denied where the provisions are unobjectionable, notwithstanding that the fixed tenant improvement allowance may disadvantage the incumbent lessor. DECISION 1120 Vermont Avenue Associates, LLP, and 1125 15th Street, LLC, both located in Washington, D.C., protest the terms of request for lease proposals (RLP) No. 1DC2107, issued by the General Services Administration (GSA), Public Buildings Service (PBS), to lease office space for a federal tenant agency.[1] The protesters contend that the RLP’s specifications exceed the tenant agency’s minimum needs and unduly restrict competition. The protesters also argue that the solicitation’s price evaluation provisions will not permit GSA to determine the lowest‑priced proposal and will disadvantage the incumbent lessor. We deny the protest. BACKGROUND On May 5, 2014, GSA issued a presolicitation notice seeking expressions of interest (EOI) from potential lessors for office space in the Washington, D.C., Central Employment Area (CEA). Agency Report (AR), Tab 16, Presolicitation Notice (PN), at 1‑3. As relevant here, the notice, as amended on January 5, 2016, specified that the office space have a minimum column spacing predominantly of 30 feet by 30 feet on center (or, 30’ column bays), and that the office space be contiguous and located on no more than four floors. AR, Tab 55, PN, Amend., at 1-4. The notice also informed potential lessors that the tenant agency required approximately 73,364 ABOA/usable square feet (USF)[2] and a maximum of 88,036 rentable square feet (RSF). Id. at 1. In their EOIs, interested lessors were to identify, among other things, their property, proposed office space, ABOA square footage, and rental rates per square foot, to include full service and a tenant improvement allowance (TIA) of $46.74 per square foot.[3] Id. at 3. GSA received EOIs for seven potential locations by the January 20, 2016, due date, including from 1120 (the incumbent lessor) and 1125. Lease Contracting Officer (LCO) Statement at 4. With respect to 1120, its EOI stated that the building had 20’ column bays, but the EOI included, for comparison, floor plans of the existing layout and test fits based on 30’ column bays, that purported to “indicate [that] the efficiencies for the 30’ column bays and the 20’ column bays can easily be matched.” Protest, attach. 3, 1120 EOI, at 2. The EOI also stated that one of 1120’s proposed floors would not be contiguous, but that the floors were accessible by elevator and that the interior stairwells were not used and were locked from the inside for security reasons. Id. at 1‑2. With respect to 1125, its EOI did propose contiguous floor space, but stated that the building “has a good portion of its column bays that are a nominal 30’ wide and most of the others are much larger than a typical 20’ x 20’ column bay.” Protest, attach. 4, 1125 EOI, at 1‑2. 1125’s EOI also included current floor plans and test fits that, like 1120’s EOI, purported to show that the “efficiencies for the 30’ column bays and the existing column bays can easily be matched.” Id. at 2. The lease contracting officer reviewed the EOIs and found that [DELETED] of the proposed locations appeared to meet the tenant agency’s minimum requirement. See LCO Statement at 4‑5.