NEW: DOGE Terminates Lease At Obama Presidential Library Site

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the federal agency established under the Trump administration and now overseen by Elon Musk, has terminated the lease for a facility that housed records from former President Barack Obama’s administration. The site, located in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, was part of the National Archives and Records Administration’s (NARA) system for preserving presidential materials.

The decision to cut ties with the facility is part of DOGE’s initiative to reduce government spending by eliminating leased properties deemed unnecessary. The closure is among nearly 750 lease cancellations ordered by the agency, a move that officials claim will save taxpayers approximately $468 million.

The Hoffman Estates facility, which was not the official Obama Presidential Library but rather a NARA-run records storage site for the main facility, contained roughly 25 million unclassified paper documents and 35,000 physical artifacts from the Obama presidency. The materials are in the process of being digitized and will be relocated to a NARA site in College Park, Maryland, by the end of Fiscal Year 2025, according to Fox News.

The Hoffman Estates site has played a role in managing records from the Obama administration while the official Obama Presidential Center is still under construction on Chicago’s South Side. The center, which is privately funded and run by the Obama Foundation, is expected to open next year.

The foundation has previously said that it does not operate as a traditional presidential library with a NARA-managed archive, a departure from past presidential centers. The termination of the lease aligns with DOGE’s larger strategy of reassessing the federal government’s real estate portfolio.

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Under Musk’s leadership, the agency has moved aggressively to eliminate what it considers wasteful expenditures. President Donald Trump and the CEO of Tesla have made clear their intentions to apply private-sector efficiency models to government operations.

Though the closure was expected, as NARA had already planned to vacate the facility by 2025, the accelerated timeline underscores DOGE’s emphasis on cost-cutting. NARA officials have indicated that the digitization of records is progressing and that the relocation to Maryland will not disrupt public access to Obama-era materials.

For Musk’s DOGE, the goal remains clear: downsizing government operations wherever possible, even if it means shutting down sites tied to a former president.

Elon Musk delivers remarks as he join U.S. President Donald Trump during an executive order signing in the Oval Office at the White House on February 11, 2025 in Washington, DC.

The General Services Administration (GSA), which oversees government-owned buildings and leased federal spaces, currently disburses over $91 million annually for approximately 2.4 million square feet of office space spread across 112 Chicago properties, per Trepp Inc. data.

According to Tom Taylor, Trepp’s senior manager of research, the government also has the option to terminate over a third of these leases by year’s end, which could withdraw roughly $30 million annually from local property owners.

Taylor noted, “In a market that’s already contending with large shifts in demand from the influence of remote work, changing the office demand paradigm, any large-scale GSA terminations could really exacerbate the existing problems with vacancy and office values in that market.”

While some property owners depend on these federal leases to manage debt, leases with the GSA constitute just under 1% of all office space in Chicago, a significantly smaller percentage than seen in Washington, D.C., and other cities with substantial federal operations, such as Kansas City.