The FBI’s announcement that it needs a new home has touched off a virtual real estate beauty contest, with communities around the region jockeying for the opportunity to attract the law enforcement agency — and attendant economic benefits — to their neighborhoods.
The pursuit has turned congressmen from neighboring states into competing pitchmen, spurred newspaper op-eds and even required a public apology from an economic development official who disparaged another community bidding for the headquarters. Public debate on Capitol Hill and in the real estate development community has focused on whether an agency whose identity is linked to the nation’s capital could find a more suitable home in the Washington suburbs.
“You would expect there to be competition among the jurisdictions for a development project as favorable as the FBI,” said Maryland Rep. Steny Hoyer, who joined counterparts from Virginia in testifying last month before a House subcommittee. “We’re all friends. We’re going to try to sell our jurisdictions as the best sites.”
The contenders include Maryland’s Prince George’s County, already home to federal agencies specializing in intelligence research and cybersecurity. Northern Virginia proponents boast of the area’s high-quality schools and proximity to the CIA headquarters and other existing FBI facilities, including its training academy, in the area. The District of Columbia is also offering a waterfront site near highways, public transit and a major league baseball stadium.
The General Services Administration, which oversees federal office space, has received about three-dozen submissions following its request for ideas to develop a new headquarters of about 2.1 million square feet. One idea under consideration is a property swap in which a developer would take over the existing FBI headquarters in exchange for constructing or providing a new building for the agency. That possible arrangement would allow the government to save on costs of a new land acquisition while a developer would get the chance to build the new headquarters and repurpose a downtown city block.
The level of interest isn’t surprising: At stake is a multi-million-dollar economic development project that would bring thousands of jobs, expand the tax base and boost area retail and service industries.
“Think about the daytime population, people coming to the FBI headquarters morning, noon and night,” said Douglas Cooper or the Urban Land Institute in Washington, a nonprofit research group. “Think about the potential for people relocating from one jurisdiction to the other to be closer to work.”
The FBI’s current headquarters, a hulking Brutalist structure that opened in 1974 on prime Pennsylvania Avenue real estate, is known by many Americans for its appearances in news broadcasts and movies. Millions have visited for tours, which are now discontinued. But the FBI says the J. Edgar Hoover Building is obsolete, inefficient and in disrepair. Those findings were confirmed by a 2011 Government Accountability Office report that agreed the building didn’t meet the agency’s long-term security needs.
The bureau wants to move more than 10,000 employees spread among leased annexes throughout the region into a secure consolidated headquarters near the highway and mass transit. It says a new headquarters could save at least $44 million in rent payments annually.
Maryland officials are pushing a site near a mass transit station in Prince George’s County, which officials say is already home to about a quarter of the region’s federal workforce and agencies including NASA and the National Security Agency. Virginia officials have touted a GSA warehouse facility in Fairfax County — between the existing headquarters and the FBI training academy and laboratory in Quantico — which they say would allow for easy access to the airports, Capitol Hill and the White House.
D.C. officials have proposed relocating the bureau to a waterfront development near the Anacostia River.
It’s an agency “that needs to be on call,” said Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, D.C.’s non-voting representative to Congress.
Aside from any sentimental attachment, any decision on where to site the headquarters needs to account for practical concerns like traffic management and affordable housing options, said Cooper, of the Urban Land Institute.
“Wherever they decide to relocate, it’s going to have an impact throughout the region — not just in that one jurisdiction but throughout that region.”
About the Author
