The FBI headquarters will move across the street in D.C. instead of across state lines to Greenbelt, Maryland, President Donald Trump’s administration announced Tuesday.
The bureau and General Services Administration selected the Ronald Reagan Building as the new location for the FBI, just blocks away from the bureau’s current headquarters, the J. Edgar Hoover Building. In a news release, the bureau said the new location will provide a world-class facility while saving taxpayers money.
“FBI’s existing headquarters at the Hoover building is a great 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.
According to the administration’s public buildings service commissioner, Michael Peters, the Hoover building had racked up $300 million in deferred maintenance costs. New construction of an FBI headquarters would have cost “billions of dollars,” Peters said.
The announcement follows some 15 years of debate, and the GSA and FBI’s decision in 2023 to move to Greenbelt. At the time, a GSA spokesperson said in a statement, “GSA determined Greenbelt to be the best site because it was the lowest cost to taxpayers, provided the greatest transportation access to FBI employees and visitors, and gave the government the most certainty on project delivery schedule.”
Trump said earlier this year that he planned to halt that relocation, even though Congress had already appropriated about $845 million for a new headquarters.
“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,” said a joint statement released by Md. Congressman Steny Hoyer’s office on behalf of Democratic members of Maryland’s congressional delegation, the governor and the Prince George’s County executive.
The delegation added that it would be fighting back against this proposal “with every tool we have.” Maryland Rep. Glenn Ivey told WTOP’s Alan Etter that he wants the federal government to honor its original deal struck during the Biden administration to bring the FBI headquarters to Greenbelt.
“Money has been appropriated for the Greenbelt site. It was selected after a 10-year plus process. That’s the law as it stands, and we want to keep it on track,” Ivey said.
In a separate statement, Virginia Sens. Tim Kaine and Mark Warner call the proposed move “a hasty, improvised approach” and a “punt” that brushed aside years of planning. However, the reaction from the District’s Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development was positive, telling WTOP that the FBI belongs in D.C.
In May, FBI Director Kash Patel confirmed the bureau would still be leaving the Hoover building, and said 1,500 employees would be moved out of the D.C. area to other locations across the country as part of the move. In its news release announcing the selection of the Ronald Reagan Building, the FBI did not announce the relocation of any employees.
The Washington Post first reported the plans by the Trump administration to relocate the FBI headquarters to the Ronald Reagan Building, which was once home to the now-gutted United States Agency for International Development. The Reagan Building complex is also home to Customs and Border Protection, the Department of Commerce and other tenants.
WTOP’s Abigail Constantino and Alan Etter contributed to this report.
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