In its drive to sharply cut spending and shrink government, the Trump administration put for sale signs effectively on some of the federal government’s most iconic and biggest buildings in downtown Chicago Tuesday.

The General Services Administration, which manages real estate for the federal government, released an online list of 443 “non-core” properties across the country. Included on it are two Loop high-rises: the Kluczynski and Metcalfe Federal Buildings.

Also on the list of Chicago properties that the administration is ready to unload are the U.S. Post Office’s Loop Station in Federal Plaza and the regional office for the Social Security Administration, according to the GSA website.

In all, the GSA says it’s willing to sell 11 properties in Chicago. The biggest of them is the Kluczynski Building, at 230 S. Dearborn St., which has more than 1.1 million square feet of office space. Kluczynski tenants include the Department of Labor, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Internal Revenue Service, the GSA and district offices of the two Democratic senators from Illinois, Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth.

“We are identifying buildings and facilities that are not core to government operations, or non-core properties for disposal,” the GSA said on its website .

“Selling ensures that taxpayer dollars are no longer spent on vacant or underutilized federal spaces. Disposing of these assets helps eliminate costly maintenance and allows us to reinvest in high-quality work environments that support agency missions.”

A spokesperson for the GSA’s Great Lakes office in Chicago did not immediately respond to a request for comment from WBEZ.

The Trump administration has set a goal of selling half the buildings that the federal government owns and ending half of the leases for offices used by federal agencies across the country. It has not said what it would do with federal employees and offices that are operating within these buildings.

On Monday, WBEZ reported that GSA is moving to cancel leases for about 30 of the 112 private properties that the federal government rents in the Chicago area, including an old furniture warehouse in the northwest suburbs where the National Archives was storing and digitizing the presidential papers of Barack Obama’s administration.

Trump ally Elon Musk’s new Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, has boasted that ending that deal would save taxpayers more than $1.4 million a year, but GSA records show that the deal for the sprawling building on Golf Road in Hoffman Estates was already expected to end on Dec. 31, because the Obama presidential library will be entirely digital.

The massive real estate moves regarding federally owned properties and government-leased space come as the Chicago area office market already is facing high vacancy rates, but the new Trump administration is looking to drastically reduce the number of federal employees, and even eliminate some U.S. government agencies.

U.S. Rep. Mike Quigley, D-Ill., who boycotted Trump’s address to a joint session of congress Tuesday, strongly criticized the decision to close so many large federal buildings.

“It makes sense to right-size on occasion, but this just isn’t the way to do it – sort of indiscriminately, without any thought, any analysis, any study,” Quigley said.

He said the closure of important government offices would have a negative impact on the taxpaying public, raising questions about where federal employees will perform their jobs.

“I think it’s going to be a tragic lesson in civics for the American people, a reminder that federal workers do important things,” Quigley said, noting that the closures in Chicago also would impact the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Quigley blasted DOGE, alleging that the goal of the effort was not to reduce the burden on taxpayers because it was truly geared to protecting the ultra-wealthy Musk, by decimating agencies investigating his business interests.

“It’s not cost cutting — it’s corruption,” the congressman said.

A notable exemption from the list of Chicago federal properties for sale is the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse at 219 S. Dearborn. But the plan put forward by GSA would wipe out much of the complex of government offices clustered for decades around Federal Plaza, which has been a popular gathering place recently for protests against Trump and Musk’s cutbacks.

The 45-story Kluszynski Federal Building was built in 1974 and designed by the famed architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.

Nearby, the Metcalfe Federal Building stands 28 stories tall at 77 W. Jackson Blvd. It was built in 1991, in the same sort of style as the Kluszynski Federal Building, and is the second-largest of the government properties in Illinois that the Trump administration has decided is surplus to requirements, with more than 700,000 square feet of office space.

The Metcalfe Federal Building’s “key tenants” are the EPA, the U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Department of Health & Human Services and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, according to the GSA website.

The Metcalfe Federal Building is only a bit larger than the third-biggest building in the state on the newly disclosed for-sale list, the Harold Washington Social Security Center. That structure takes up an entire city block in the West Loop, at 600 W. Madison St.

Other federal buildings in Chicago that now are for sale include the 12-story U.S. Customhouse, built in 1932 at 610 S. Canal St.

The GSA also said it’s looking to offload three other buildings in Illinois, in East St. Louis, Carbondale and Quincy.