Want a New Weed Research Unit? Federal Government Lists Unwanted Properties

Not on the list. Er, this is awkward.

​Attention, geography nerds, real-estate speculators, and government haters (that includes everyone, doesn't it?): You may soon be able to pick up a federally owned property on the cheap thanks to a new online listing service from the U.S. government.

Barack "I Killed Osama, Bitch" Obama is continuing his heroic odyssey with a bit of budget-cutting showmanship, listing "excess" federal properties online through the Civilian Property Realignment Board. There's also a snazzy poster.

There's a mess of 'em in Miami; we don't have too many here in Broward except for three "aquatic weed control research units" owned by the Department of Agriculture.

This gets perplexing. The location pinpointed on the map is on College Avenue between Nova Southeastern and BCC in Davie, but a closer look doesn't clearly turn up what they're describing, which is a 720-square-foot empty office space. Turns out the map doesn't actually show the locations of the properties.

If dude can pinpoint a terrorist mastermind inside a concrete bunker under the military's eyes in northern Pakistan, you'd expect he'd at least get his team to map his abandoned properties correctly.

OK, now we're intrigued. What if we want affordable office space? What if there's a stockpile of unused pesticide we can use to build a secret laboratory?

For someone interested in buying the properties, though, it could be quite useful. The General Services Administration routinely holds auctions for unwanted federal properties, resulting in bargains on some pretty glamorous if inefficient old buildings.

Alas, the site seems only to trumpet the fact that the government holds 14,000 buildings it doesn't need, rather than offering to unload them on the cheap.

So your desire for an aquatic weed control research unit or a mysterious structure in the Everglades may have to wait.

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