Maryland, Virginia Officials Compete for Mammoth New FBI Headquarters

Law enforcement officers walk past the J. Edgar Hoover FBI Building in Washington on July 21, 2022. (Chung I Ho/The Epoch Times)

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and other officials are trying to convince government authorities to choose a site in their state for a mammoth new FBI headquarters, which is expected to cost more than $1 billion.

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), and other Maryland officials met with the FBI and General Services Administration (GSA) on March 8 to make their case. Kaine, Mark Warner (D-Va.), and other Virginia officials followed on Thursday.

“The new FBI headquarters belongs in the state of Maryland,” Moore, a Democrat, told reporters after the meeting.

The Virginia group said a location in Springfield would be best, in part because of its proximity to the FBI Academy in Quantico.

The GSA and FBI did not respond to requests for comment.

The GSA and FBI must choose from one of three sites. One is in Landover, Maryland; one is in Greenbelt, Maryland; and the third is in Springfield.

The new facility will replace the J. Edgar Hoover building in Washington. At least 7,500 personnel will work in the building, which could cost billions of dollars.

The current headquarters was erected in 1974 for $126 million, up from an earlier estimate of $60 million.

The Government Accountability Office said in 2011 that “the FBI has outgrown its aging headquarters.” The building could be repaired, demolished, and replaced with a new building on the same site, or replaced with a new building at a different site, the office said.

Each option would likely cost over $1 billion, according to the agency.

An FBI relocation study concluded the agency needed a 2.6 million-square-foot facility on a site of between 55 and 65 acres.

Criteria

The Trump administration wanted to replace the Hoover building with a new facility at the same site, but the Biden administration backs moving the headquarters to a new building elsewhere.

“The Administration has begun a multi-year process of constructing a modern, secure suburban facility from which the FBI can continue its mission to protect the American people,” the White House said in a recent document.

Congress directed the GSA in March 2022 to study the viability of the three sites and brief Congress on the results. Congress said in the late 2022 omnibus package that officials “shall conduct separate and detailed consultations with individuals representing the sites from the State of Maryland and Commonwealth of Virginia to further consider perspectives related to mission requirements, sustainable siting and equity.”

GSA and FBI officials, in a site selection plan, outlined five criteria that they would use to select a site.

The criteria to be weighted the most was labeled “FBI Mission Requirement,” and included proximity to Quantico and proximity to the Department of Justice headquarters in Washington.

The next most important was transportation access, or access to public transportation and proximity to an airport.

The other criteria included site development flexibility, “advancing racial equity,” and cost.

Cases for Each Site

The Greenbelt and Springfield sites are both near Metrorail stations and other public transportation. The Landover site has some transportation options as well.

The Greenbelt site is owned by the state of Maryland and the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority. The Landover site is privately owned. The Springfield site is already owned by the federal government.

Moore said building at either of the Maryland sites would be “faster and cheaper” than the Virginia site, because both are “build ready” unlike the Springfield site.

“We’re very serious when we say that Maryland has the best possible site for the FBI on every single criteria that they laid out,” he said.

“The mission will be served by the building we build that would be built at any one of these three sites. The cost, however, will be substantially more and take substantially longer time to do at the Springfield site,” Hoyer added.

Virginia officials said the Springfield site compared well on cost since the federal government already owns the land and highlighted the proximity to Quantico.

Kaine and Warner said the choice is important because the new headquarters will likely be in place for the next half-century.

“This site works not only for the FBI of today, it will work for the FBI of 50 years from now,” Kaine said.

Local officials will be given $375 million to start work once a site is chosen.

According to the White House, the FBI and GSA are also working on identifying a federally owned location in Washington where 750 to 1,000 FBI personnel would work in order to support day-to-day engagement with the Department of Justice headquarters, the White House, and Congress.