This is what happens when the Western Slope finally gets nice things, like the relocation of the BLM headquarters and dozens of new jobs.
The General Services Administration (GSA) signed the lease Friday for the office inside a professional office building at 760 Horizon Drive, already occupied by at least eight other businesses and located conveniently near the airport.
GSA is the government agency that choses what buildings fit federal requirements to lease for office space. Yes, there’s an entire federal bureaucracy dedicated to renting stuff.
Apparently, the GSA failed to ask permission from the media or environmentalists if this space was adequate, or whether some of the tenants should first be evicted.
So now, the BLM will be on the same real estate occupied by two software companies, a construction company, business management consultants, insurance agents, and folks who do geospatial stuff.
Oh, the horror.
Just kidding. Nobody cares about those other offices.
Not only does Chevron rent an office in the building, but there’s also an office for an independent energy exploration company and a professional energy association.
We find it hilarious the Washington Post (Denver Post, you should know better) headline suggests some sort of impropriety.
You have to buy a subscription or use up a free read to discover there’s a whole bunch of other offices in the building, and this key sentence:
Located on the Rockies’ Western Slope, Grand Junction lies in the heart of a natural gas reservoir, and the region hosts a number of oil and gas operations.
Not to mention the Grand Junction area is not exactly swimming in available executive office buildings like Denver, or Washington.
Of course the Washington Post still asked BLM spokesman Chris Tollefson to defend the location, and got this snappy answer in return:
“Their process to procure the lease was open, competitive and fair, irrespective of other lessees at the properties of interest …”
“To suggest the lease agreement was chosen to afford unethical access to select special interest groups is flagrant and ironic given the access to special interests in Washington as opposed to western communities.”