In January 2023, the General Services Administration (GSA) announced that a portion of the Tennessee Valley Authority’s (TVA) Chattanooga Office Complex (COC), which consists of five buildings (Signal Place, Lookout Place, Missionary Ridge (MR), Blue Ridge (BR), and Monteagle Place), was being considered for the site of a new federal courthouse. In anticipation of a possible move, TVA created a stand-alone project to vacate MR and BR and consolidate (Vacate and Consolidate) into the other three COC buildings. In March 2024, TVA requested public input on four alternatives identified for the COC as required by the National Environmental Policy Act. Public input was to inform TVA decision makers about expected environmental consequences related to each alternative. On February 13, 2025, the TVA Board approved MR and BR for surplus and in July 2025, TVA made the decision to remain in three buildings at the COC.
We determined that TVA’s analysis of the options for the COC could have been improved. Specifically, (1) TVA did not compare the financial impacts of the four alternatives identified in the National Environmental Policy Act process to determine the best course of action before starting a project, and (2) the economic analysis for the Vacate and Consolidate project was flawed because it did not include all relevant costs and included an inaccurate input that was not reviewed for reasonableness by TVA. During TVA’s process for evaluating alternatives for the COC, we informed management of our findings. Subsequently, TVA took interim actions to address the concerns before making a final decision.
