The General Services Administration selected Greenbelt, Maryland, to be the new location of the FBI's national headquarters in the latest twist to a convoluted search that has stretched more than a decade.
The deal may finally allow the Bureau to relocate from the crumbling J. Edgar Hoover building in downtown Washington, D.C., though the decision is already facing pushback — including from the head of the FBI.
The GSA, the federal government's real estate arm, picked Greenbelt over competing sites in Landover, Maryland, and Springfield, Virginia — the other two finalists the federal government selected in 2016 for consideration. Barring additional legal challenges, the FBI plans to leave behind its current home in an aging behemoth of a structure that's been called dilapidated and the ugliest building in the nation's capital.
The 61-acre Greenbelt site is located at the Greenbelt Metro station and is owned by the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, the local transportation agency better known as WMATA or Metro. The GSA estimated the new state-of-the-art headquarters campus will represent a $2.5 billion investment and create 7,500 jobs, though it is expected to take years to build.
“This is a historic moment for the Federal Bureau of Investigation and our nation," Maryland officials said in a joint statement Wednesday following the announced selection. "For decades, the dilapidated J. Edgar Hoover Building has failed to meet the FBI’s operational needs, which has undermined our national security. The once fabled building has crumbled before our eyes, with nets surrounding the facility for years to protect pedestrians from falling debris."
In a site selection summary released Thursday, the GSA said it picked Greenbelt because it provides the greatest transportation access to FBI employees and visitors, gives the government the most certain construction timeline due to the land being owned by a public entity — an important element with the J. Edgar Hoover building deteriorating — offers the lowest cost to taxpayers and provides the greatest potential to advance sustainability and equity.
The total projected cost to acquire and/or prepare the site for construction for Greenbelt is estimated to be around $26.2 million, compared to about $64.1 million for Springfield and over $100 million for Landover, according to the summary.
Though Maryland officials have celebrated the news, concerns over the selection process have already started to emerge. On Thursday, FBI Director Christopher Wray reportedly slammed the Greenbelt selection, saying in a note to employees that a Biden appointee might have interfered with the outcome.
“We have concerns about fairness and transparency in the process and GSA’s failure to adhere to its own site selection plan,” Wray wrote in a message that was reported by the Wall Street Journal.
Officials in Maryland and Virginia vied for years to secure the proposed 2.1 million-square-foot project for their respective states. The GSA last September laid out its five-point criteria for picking from among the three potential sites: how the location helps meet the FBI’s mission, accessibility to public transportation, site development flexibility, racial equity and environmental sustainability, and cost.
Earlier this year, Virginia officials made an 11th-hour pitch ahead of a final meeting with the GSA to sell the agency on its Springfield site, highlighting transportation options, education and a diverse workforce as some of the reasons they believed the 58-acre, federally-owned Parr Franconia warehouse complex should beat out the Greenbelt and Landover locations in Maryland.
Competing Bids
The lengthy bid process had been a somewhat friendly competition between the two states before growing increasingly tense following the GSA’s release of its weighted criteria describing how it would pick a location. Officials had even traded barbs in press conferences in the run-up to the decision in an effort to sell the agency on their respective sites.
“This is a competition and our friends across the river have done everything they can to try to cook the books to get the FBI to locate in Maryland,” Virginia U.S. Rep. Gerry Connolly said in February. “They tried to change the criteria GSA and FBI are using to make this decision. They’ve disparaged us.”
Some of that bitterness carried over following the GSA's decision Wednesday, with Virginia Sens. Mark Warner and Tim Kaine saying they were "deeply disappointed that despite the clear case that Virginia is the best home for the FBI, the Administration went a different direction."
Warner and Kaine, two Democrats, added that "it’s especially disappointing that the FBI’s initial criteria for this decision—developed independently by the GSA and affirmed by Congress just last year—were changed at the 11th hour by the Administration following political pressure. We spent years appropriately criticizing the last Administration for politicizing the new FBI headquarters—only for a new Administration to come in and allow politics to taint the selection process."
The change the two senators referred to was a decision by the GSA in July to give more weight to cost and social equity concerns over other criteria, which benefited Maryland, and reduce the importance of the site's location to the FBI Academy, a determination that hurt Virginia.
The deal to move the FBI's headquarters is not final and is still subject to Congress approval.
Maryland lawmakers had argued that their state has been overlooked compared to Fairfax County in Northern Virginia when it comes to federal investment. However, a Washington Post analysis of the GSA’s database of federal property, which the agency used as part of the selection process, showed Prince George’s County, Maryland, actually has nearly twice as much federal property and office space as Fairfax County thanks to NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and the Henry A. Wallace Beltsville Agricultural Research Center.
One of Maryland's primary arguments was also its diversity. Maryland leaders have made the argument that a move to the area would help patch the historically contentious relationship between the FBI and Black Americans, in addition to meeting a diversity benchmark that was the result of a 2021 executive order to prioritize racial equity within federal agencies.
Other Federal Tenants
While the Springfield site seemed as though it would win out in terms of cost — the federal government already owns the industrial business park at 6699 Springfield Center Drive — it is already home to other federal tenants, which the GSA projected in 2016 would cost $200 million to relocate. It was also the smallest of the three sites and is more than a mile from the closest Metro station, Franconia-Springfield, while the proposed Greenbelt location is situated directly at the Greenbelt Metro station.
The FBI's relocation process has been in the works for more than a decade. In 2017, it hit a snag when the Trump administration paused the move, instead deciding to redevelop the current D.C. headquarters. Congress blocked funding for that plan, and relocation efforts resumed last year.
With the decision ostensibly done, the FBI can begin preparing its relocation from the J. Edgar Hoover building, a Brutalist-style property at 935 Pennsylvania Ave. NW that has housed FBI agents since 1974. The concrete structure, which construction material supplier Buildworld earlier this year called the ugliest building in America, has fallen into disrepair and no longer meets the necessary security requirements for the agency.
The agency's relocation and the potential future razing of the J. Edgar Hoover building would also free up two prime city blocks for potential redevelopment as D.C. officials push to remake vacant, downtown office space into other uses, primarily apartments that can help alleviate housing shortages and curb rising rents.
The FBI move will "allow for the Pennsylvania Avenue parcel to be conveyed to the private sector consistent with redevelopment goals for the avenue, while improving the efficiency of GSA's and FBI's real estate operations," the GSA said in an earlier release on the potential relocation.
The agency is expected to consolidate from several leased locations to the new headquarters as part of the move.