The Trump administration officially canceled plans for the FBI to move its headquarters to suburban Maryland and instead said the agency will relocate to another office complex in Washington, a move that keeps thousands of workers in downtown D.C.
The FBI and the General Services Administration, the agency that manages federal real estate, said Tuesday the decision to shift the bureau from the J. Edgar Hoover Building at 935 Pennsylvania Ave. to the nearby Ronald Reagan Building complex comes after nearly two decades of failed efforts to find a permanent location.
Some 7,300 employees are assigned to work in FBI headquarters, according to the agency.
In November 2023, with Joe Biden serving as president, the GSA selected a 61-acre site near a Metro station in Greenbelt, Maryland, for a new FBI headquarters in what appeared to be a crescendo to the agency's decadelong search for a home. At the time, Maryland officials celebrated a decision they said could create demand for property, shops and services near the proposed facility about 14 miles northeast of the current FBI headquarters near the White House.
The mood in Maryland quickly turned minutes after Tuesday's announcement to move down the street instead. Team Maryland, a group representing Maryland's U.S. senators, House members, Gov. Wes Moore and Prince George's County officials, said the Trump administration is trying to redirect money that would have been used for the new headquarters complex.
"The FBI deserves a headquarters that meets their security and mission needs — and following an extensive, thorough, and transparent process, Greenbelt, Maryland, was selected as the site that best meets those requirements," Team Maryland said in a statement.
It added that "not only was this decision final, the Congress appropriated funds specifically for the purpose of the new, consolidated campus to be built in Maryland. Now the administration is attempting to redirect those funds — both undermining congressional intent and dealing a blow to the men and women of the FBI — since we know that a headquarters located within the District would not satisfy their security needs."
'Cost effective' move
The Trump administration's announcement comes a few months after the GSA's Office of Inspector General found flaws in the search for a new home for the FBI that resulted in the selection of the Greenbelt suburb over competing sites in Landover, Maryland, and Springfield, Virginia — the other two finalists the federal government selected in 2016 for consideration.
Inspector General investigators concluded that the GSA provided inaccurate information on costs, failed to provide specific enough data at times and didn't properly maintain cell phone text messages during the selection process.
The move would also fulfill President Donald Trump's longtime pledge to keep the FBI in Washington, D.C. FBI Director Kash Patel called the decision "a historic moment" for the bureau that will provide a safer place to work for agents and staff.
"Moving to the Ronald Reagan Building is the most cost effective and resource efficient way to carry out our mission to protect the American people and uphold the Constitution," Patel said in the statement.
The Reagan complex is a few blocks from the current FBI headquarters on Pennsylvania Avenue that has been the bureau's home for 50 years. The once-fabled building has been plagued with structural problems for at least two decades, FBI officials have said, adding that nets have surrounded the facility for years to protect pedestrians from falling debris.
"FBI's existing headquarters at the Hoover building is a perfect example of a government building that has accumulated years of deferred maintenance, suffering from an aging water system to concrete falling off the structure," GSA Acting Administrator Stephen Ehikian said in a statement.
Previous efforts focused on constructing a new suburban campus that "would have cost the taxpayers billions of dollars and taken years to construct," the GSA and FBI said. In addition to pointing out the projected cost savings, the agencies said they chose the Ronald Reagan Building complex to support of the administration's goal to optimize the federal government's real estate portfolio.
The Reagan Building complex currently houses U.S. Customs and Border Protection, or CBP, and other tenants. The complex's tenants previously included the U.S. Agency for International Development, a group the Trump administration gutted and folded into the State Department this year.
"The GSA will continue to support and work with CBP on space that allows them to fulfill their mission while the transition of the FBI to the Reagan Building commences," the GSA said.