it's no different than a person cancelling a lease to an apartment. 
The building probably IS owned by Columbia and the government plans to no longer be there and are "vacating the premises".
It has no bearing on who owns the building it's a matter of no longer paying to be there.
It is all the AI-programmed bullshit "cancellations" that brainlessly make no provisions for WHERE the occupants WILL be (assuming they haven't already been "fired" since NASA has been undergoing a gutting process).
There is a similar phenomena of cancelling WAH (work at home) agreements and forcing employees to return to work with not enough leased space to even work. I have former co-workers who had indicated that there was a running joke going around about "driving in to work and sitting in their cars out on the street to try to access their networks" because there was no office space to return to.
(and just to clarify - federal employees are not just working in "government-owned" buildings but most are probably working in "private" buildings where space is leased by GSA)
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