The National Security Agency wants to stop renting and start owning its San Antonio operations center. After more than two decades of leasing the sprawling cybersecurity and surveillance campus near Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland, the agency is now negotiating a roughly $500 million purchase of the property, according to federal budget documents.
The proposed deal, reported by the San Antonio Express-News, is valued at $500 million and has been in the works for several years. The campus sits off Potranco Road, covers roughly 100 acres and includes 953,000 square feet of facilities — offices, a data center, warehouse space and a visitor control center, per the newspaper's reporting. If finalized, the purchase would transfer the property — described by the newspaper as one of Bexar County's largest private office complexes — into federal ownership.
The site began as a former Sony chip fabrication plant before it was converted into what is now a cybersecurity and surveillance hub employing more than 3,000 people, the paper reports. Workers there monitor foreign communications and help protect U.S. computer networks as part of NSA Texas, also known as the Texas Cryptologic Center — one of four cryptologic centers run by the Fort Meade, Maryland-based surveillance agency, alongside sites at Fort Eisenhower, Georgia; Buckley Space Force Base, Colorado; and Oahu, Hawaii. Those other three centers sit on federally owned property, while the San Antonio site does not.
Rising Costs Behind the Push to Buy
The estimated purchase cost has climbed by more than $150 million over the past year, the newspaper's reporting shows, and Congress has already approved $500 million in funding for it as part of the Pentagon's 2026 budget. Federal budget documents cited by the Express-News indicate the purchase deal is expected to be finalized by the end of September.
Money is clearly part of the motivation. The NSA paid $63 million to lease the complex this year, a cost that works out to about $65.65 per square foot and that rose 3% from the previous year, per the newspaper. Over two decades of leasing, the agency has paid an estimated as much as $800 million in rent, according to the same reporting. The agency told Congress that buying the property would reduce its dependence on leased space and cut the Pentagon's costly lease expenses.
The NSA also framed the purchase in security terms, saying it would neutralize the risk of the property falling under future foreign ownership, control or influence. The agency said buying the campus is in the best interest of U.S. taxpayers and insisted its San Antonio operation, however the deal shakes out, is not going anywhere — it would simply continue leasing the facilities if the sale falls through.
Trump Administration Pressure on Federal Leases
The push to buy rather than rent lines up with broader directives from Washington. The Trump administration has mandated cuts to the federal government's real estate portfolio, which includes 7,500 leases nationwide, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered the military to consider slashing administrative and warehousing lease costs by 30%. According to the Express-News, a failed sale would jeopardize the agency's compliance with both the executive order and Hegseth's memo.
What It Would Mean for Bexar County's Tax Rolls
The campus is currently owned by COPT Defense Properties, which along with its subsidiaries owns more than a dozen parcels on the West Side, including five that make up the main part of the NSA Texas campus. Four of those parcels are valued at a combined $185 million, according to the Bexar Central Appraisal District. A completed purchase would remove at least four parcels from the county's tax rolls, eliminating an estimated $4.2 million in potential annual property tax revenue, per the appraisal district figures cited in the newspaper's reporting.
COPT's surrounding holdings in the area include Microsoft and Amazon data centers along with vacant land, plus a separate office building at 3900 Rogers Road, about five miles from the NSA Texas campus. That building is currently available for rent and could reportedly be converted into a facility for classified work, the Express-News reports. Neither COPT nor the NSA responded to the newspaper's requests for comment about the prospective sale.
A Facility With Deep Local Roots
NSA Texas works alongside Air Forces Cyber at Lackland and the Texas Cyber Command, positioning San Antonio as a linchpin in the region's cybersecurity footprint. Background compiled by electrospaces.net identifies the site as an NSA satellite campus at Lackland Air Force Base.
More recent counts put staffing at roughly 3,000, as cited by AFCEA. For a West Side neighborhood that has hosted the agency's operations for two decades, the coming weeks could determine whether that presence becomes permanent — or stays, once again, a lease.
