Decision on FBI headquarters delayed with funding unresolved

WASHINGTON – The federal government is delaying the release of its plans for a new FBI headquarters with lawmakers set to consider requests for additional funding in coming months.

Three locations, in Greenbelt, Landover and Springfield, are under consideration for the project, and a shortlist of developers has been selected to compete for the work.

But with more money needed for the project and the current stopgap budget legislation due to expire April 28, officials at the General Services Administration, which is managing the project, opted to hold off on releasing an initial plan on where to build the new headquarters and who will build it.

GSA officials had initially planned to make a decision before the end of 2016, in the final days of the Obama administration. In October, the GSA announced that “due to a strong and overwhelmingly positive response from developers to the solicitation” the agency would need more time, and set a March 10 deadline.

This time the agency issued a statement saying the process was delayed, but declined to set a new deadline.

“GSA and FBI have worked diligently since the Fall issuance of the revised schedule,” an agency spokeswoman said in a statement. “We have met the milestones at this point. Appropriations are necessary in order for us to make an announcement and move forward with the next critical steps under the process and ultimately make an award.”

President Trump is personally familiar with the project, having considered it as a businessman and opened his Trump International Hotel nearby on Pennsylvania Avenue. Two of his associates, developers Steven Roth and Larry Silverstein, are bidding on the project, raising questions about whether their relationships with the president could affect the award.

But Trump has yet to nominate a new administrator to run the agency, and the top official at the GSA for public buildings – including the FBI project and the Old Post Office Pavilion, home to Trump’s hotel – announced this week that he was leaving the agency.

The document the GSA is preparing to release is an environmental-impact statement, as required by the National Environmental Policy Act. That document is expected to include a “preferred” destination for the project. The agency would subsequently make a formal award of the project to one of the competing bidders.

Hanging in the balance is a construction project likely to tally well over $2 billion and, more importantly to the developers bidding, the chance to redevelop the current site of the crumbling J. Edgar Hoover Building downtown. That site will be provided to the winning developer to help the government foot the bill for the new project.

That swap remains controversial, with many real estate experts and some officials on Capitol Hill saying it likely will not produce as valuable a return for taxpayers as selling the Hoover building and separately funding a new one would.

An FBI spokeswoman declined to comment.