Cushman & Wakefield’s Mark Weiss Named GSA Public Buildings Commissioner

The Trump administration has tapped veteran commercial real estate broker Mark Weiss to oversee one of the country’s largest property portfolios.

Commercial Observer can first report the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) has appointed Weiss, an executive vice chairman at Cushman & Wakefield, as commissioner of its Public Buildings Service (PBS), which manages about 8,500 federally owned and leased properties totaling nearly 360 million square feet. It includes office buildings, courthouses, border-crossing facilities and historic federal properties.

Weiss comes to the PBS job with 42 years of commercial real estate experience, including the past decade at Cushman & Wakefield. He has worked on office leasing and advisory work involving clients in finance, law, health care, technology and manufacturing.

“At its core, PBS’s mission is to provide and manage efficient, cost-effective and mission-ready workplaces that enable federal agencies to serve the American people,” Weiss said in a statement. “We will continue to advance the Trump-Vance administration’s objectives and maintain the integrity of the federal government’s real estate portfolio.”

Weiss assumes responsibility for the nonmilitary federal property portfolio as GSA confronts about $50 billion in deferred maintenance and seeks greater access to funding. The agency is also advocating to raise the federal construction and leasing prospectus threshold from $4.1 million to $75 million to significantly reduce the number of projects requiring congressional approval.

“The opportunity to be of service to your country is an incredible honor, and we are thrilled for Mark as he enters this next chapter of his career,” Brad Kreiger, co-chief executive for the Americas at Cushman & Wakefield, said in a statement.

GSA Administrator Edward Forst also appointed Jennifer Hill as commissioner of the agency’s Federal Acquisition Service, which oversees more than $100 billion in business volume involving approximately 16,000 companies.

Hill joined GSA in February as an adviser to Forst and previously worked for Goldman Sachs and Bank of America, including a role as chief financial officer of Bank of America Merrill Lynch. She is now in charge of the operation providing procurement, technology and other services to more than 80 federal agencies.

“I’m excited to execute on the administrator’s vision for GSA acquisition: buy smarter, move faster, and reduce fraud,” Hill said.

Gregory Cornfield can be reached at gcornfield@commercialobserver.com.

Source: commercialobserver.com — article syndicated from the publisher’s feed; all rights remain with the original publisher.