The National Security Agency wasted $3.6 million on a parking garage in Washington that was built and then demolished before anyone could use it, according to a 2021 Inspector General report.
The report claims that employees at the NSA voiced concerns over a parking shortage for decades, yet the administration consistently failed to make improving employee parking a priority. This lack of prioritization led to years of shoddy, mismanaged projects that failed to make any meaningful improvements. One of their most spectacular failures was a garage.
The project was a “foundationless, single-story, steel, and precast concrete parking structure that installs over existing asphalt surface parking lot, adding 87 new spaces,” the report said. “The system is demountable and may be used in a permanent or semi-permanent manner.”
In 2014, NSA administrators decided to build the structure “quickly and at a low cost,” the report found, as it was a Commercial-Off-the-Shelf product. The agency believed that the structure would provide between 150-250 additional parking spaces within the N8/N9 lots of NSA-W campus and would help to alleviate parking congestion.
However, when the work was complete, it only added 87 parking spaces. Additionally, the NSA estimated cost of $25,000 per space came out to about $34,000 per space.
After construction, three design and engineering firm determined the new structure to be unsafe and the structure was demolished for $500,000 in 2019 without ever being used.
The Inspector General found that after five years, the project ultimately wasted $3.6 million for an overbudget structure that was never used.
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