The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is relocating its headquarters to the The Ronald Reagan Building, closing the storied headquarters building it has occupied since 1975, the law enforcement agency said July 1.
The agency is currently housed in the J. Edgar Hoover Building in downtown Washington D.C.
“This is a historic moment for the FBI,” FBI Director Kash Patel said in a joint announcement with the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA).”Through our strong partnerships with members of Congress and GSA we are ushering FBI Headquarters into a new era and providing our agents of justice a safer place to work. Moving to the Ronald Reagan Building is the most cost effective and resource efficient way to carry out our mission.”
Back in May, Patel announced agency was moving its more than 1,500 personnel out of the downtown Washington D.C. building.
The planned relocation from comes more than than two decades of looking for a new office and after federal officials cited an aging building, needed space to meet the agency’s mission and workforce requirements.
FBI’s existing headquarters in the Hoover building “has accumulated years of deferred maintenance, suffering from an aging water system to concrete falling off the structure,” said GSA Acting Administrator Stephen Ehikian. “I am proud of the GSA’s commitment to working with Director Patel and his FBI team to find a building that best supports their mission and their people.”
The plan headquarters the FBI inside a building once home to the U.S. Agency for International Development, the principal agency extending aid to countries recovering from disaster, which has since been dismantled by the Trump administration.
The announcement did not provide a move date and USA TODAY has reached out to the FBI for comment.
How many people work at
Patel previously spoke about closing Hoover Building and transforming it into some type of a “deep state” museum.
In May, Patel said the FBI had about 11,000 of its 38,000 or so staff in the National Capital Region, a 50-mile radius around Washington, D.C.
“It’s like a third of the workforce. A third of the crime doesn’t happen here. So we’re taking 1,500 of those folks and moving them out,” Patel said this spring.
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Where is the FBI headquarters?
The FBI’s headquarters is currently housed in the Hoover Building in Washington, D.C. at 935 Pennsylvania Avenue NW.
The Reagan Building complex, at 1300 Pennsylvania Ave NW, is currently home to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and other tenants.
“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 FBI and GSA wrote in the announcement.
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‘A world-class location’
GSA Public Buildings Service Commissioner Michael Peters said the move provides “a world-class location for the FBI’s public servants, but it also saves Americans billions of dollars on new construction and avoids more than $300 million in deferred maintenance costs at the J. Edgar Hoover facility.”
Contributing: USA TODAY’s Josh Meyer
Natalie Neysa Alund is a senior reporter for USA TODAY. Reach her at nalund@usatoday.com and follow her on X @nataliealund.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: FBI relocates headquarters to Ronald Reagan Building
