DEA LAB TO VACATE MCLEAN OFFICE BUILDING

Agency's Lease Expired Oct. 31; Move to New Space in Chantilly Set for Sept.

The Drug Enforcement Administration will vacate a McLean office building
where it has been squatting for nearly six months on an expired lease,
closing the door on a bureaucratic foul-up that required congressional
intervention to resolve.

The General Services Administration, the federal government's real estate
agency, which took responsibility for the blunder, signed a two-year lease
last week on a temporary new home for the DEA's testing lab in a Chantilly
business park.

The DEA, which had occupied space in McLean since 1972, will move its
operations to the new 35,000-square-foot building in September.

The GSA has also signed a lease for 50,000 square feet of permanent lab
space for the DEA in Sterling. The DEA does not have the authority to
negotiate its own leases.

"We did find a solution," said Anthony E. Costa, the GSA's assistant
regional administrator for public buildings in the Washington area. "We
just need to make sure we're not in this position again."

The shuffling of the DEA between offices will cost taxpayers about $6
million, congressional sources said.

Costa said in an interview yesterday that he now requires a specific action
plan for each lease the federal government has in the Washington area. The
plan details what will happen after the lease expires.

Asked whether he was confident that a situation like this would not occur
again, Costa said he is "getting more confident."

"I'd feel most confident if I were looking at each of the action plans, but
I'm not," he said.

The lab's McLean landlord, West Group, had expected that the agency would
be out by an agreed-upon date of Oct. 31, 1999. The West Group, Tysons
Corner's largest landlord, already had extended the lease by two years to
give the government extra time to find a bigger lab for the DEA.

But Oct. 31 came and went, and by February, the West Group, after sending
multiple notices to vacate, had had enough.

It contacted the three U.S. representatives who represent portions of
Northern Virginia: Democrat James P. Moran Jr. and Republicans Thomas M.
Davis III and Frank R. Wolf. Under pressure from the congressmen, the GSA
agreed that the lab would be out by September.

The temporary lab is only slightly larger than the 30,000-square-foot
facility in McLean. But Terry Parham, chief spokesman for the DEA, said the
space is sufficient.

"It's more than adequate and satisfactory for what we need to do at this
time," Parham said. "We are more than satisfied with the outcome and are
excited to be moving to a new facility."

West Group plans to build an office building on the McLean site to take
advantage of one of the hottest commercial real estate markets on record in
Northern Virginia.