In a stunning blow to Greater Washington, the nation’s top law enforcement agency will have to stay put in its deteriorating downtown D.C. headquarters for the foreseeable future.
The General Services Administration has pulled the plug on its search for a consolidated FBI headquarters in either suburban Maryland or Northern Virginia, more than five years after a government watchdog concluded the agency had outgrown its aging J. Edgar Hoover headquarters on Pennsylvania Avenue and needed to plan for its long-term future.
The GSA was scheduled to notify interested parties of its decision Tuesday morning, less than a month after a key House subcommittee proposed stripping $200 million in funding for the $2.5 billion project for the government’s next fiscal year.
It was perhaps the most eagerly anticipated federal project in the region in years, not only for the impact it would have on the winning site but for the opportunity is would create to remake an entire city block now home to what many people consider to be one of the city’s ugliest buildings.