Maryland, Virginia Compete for $4B FBI Headquarters

The General Services Administration has begun lining up the funding for one of the federal government’s biggest development projects—a new headquarters for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The FBI has been planning for several years to relocate to a suburban campus from the dour concrete monolith it has been occupying since 1975 on 10^th Street near the White House.

Later this year, the bureau will choose between three finalist locations for the new HQ, which has an estimated price tag of $4B:

The three sites, narrowed down in 2016 and then shelved for several years until Congress resumed funding last year, consist of two properties in Prince George’s County, Maryland, and a third site in Fairfax County, Virginia.

The sites in Maryland include an 80-acre site of the former Landover Mall, owned by Lerner Enterprises, and a 61-acre site in proximity to the Greenbelt Metro station, the land owned by the state and the metro line. The Virginia site is a 58-acre warehouse complex in Springfield on federally owned land.

Last week, the GSA released its budget request for the FBI HQ project, which indicated GSA will use a new $10B Federal Capital Revolving Fund to fund the construction of the FBI headquarters, with annual appropriations of $233M over the next 15 years, in addition to $645M that was appropriated in last year’s budget.

“GSA and FBI are currently working to select one of the three sites previously included in the 2016 procurement, on which GSA will construct a federally owned, modern and secure headquarters facility for at least 7,500 personnel in the DC suburbs,” GSA said, in a statement accompanying the budget request.

GSA released its selection criteria for the FBI headquarters project in September, calling them “mission requirements,” including a location in proximity to the FBI Academy in Quantico.

In order of priority, GSA listed its criteria as “FBI Mission,” transportation access, racial equality, development flexibility of the site and cost.

In addition to the FBI HQ project, GSA also proposed in its budget request $193M for a consolidation of Department of Homeland Security facilities at the St. Elizabeth’s West campus and $91M for repairs at the Ronald Reagan Building.

Until it moved into its current HQ in northwest DC in 1975, the FBI was housed in the Department of Justice Building, now named for Robert F. Kennedy.