Virginia sites offered for new FBI headquarters

Northern Virginia is competing with Maryland and the District of Columbia to be the site of a new FBI headquarters.

The General Services Administration (GSA) is evaluating potential new homes for the FBI, housed since the 1970s in the deteriorating J. Edgar Hoover Building in Washington. The GSA received 35 responses to its initial request for information for the new headquarters, which would cover up to 2.1 million square feet of space.

According to GSA’s Press Secretary Mafara Hobson, the agency will evaluate the responses and possibly issue a Request for Proposals in the future.

Many localities in Northern Virginia have announced their interest in landing the FBI headquarters, including Dumfries, Springfield and Herndon. Loudoun County alone has proposed eight sites. Fairfax County Supervisor Jeffrey C. McKay (D-Lee District) is advocating a GSA-owned warehouse by the Franconia-Springfield Metro Station. McKay says converting the warehouse into the FBI headquarters would be a good use of resources since it is already owned by the federal government. The CIA, however, is rumored to have a secret location at that facility, according to a recent Washington Post article.

Developer Litt Thompson submitted Carmel Church Station in Caroline County as a possible headquarters site. Carmel Church Station is a 1,100-acre, mixed-use site in the early planning stages. “A lot of people are scratching their heads including Spotsylvania because we are trying to make the argument that you should consider slightly further south where we have so many benefits that inside the Beltway you would not have,” Thompson says.

He says that Carmel Church Station would be strategically safe since it is outside the 50-mile, “sensitive zone” or “blast zone” of Washington. It also would be within walking distance of a train station and would create a reverse commute to Northern Virginia, easing traffic congestion, Thompson says.

Spotsylvania County has launched www.fbiatspotsy.com, a website that explains why the county would be best suited for the FBI headquarters and highlights four potential sites. Last spring, officials from Stafford and Prince William counties submitted a joint letter to FBI Director Robert Mueller advocating their counties as ideal locations.