DALLAS – The $1.8 billion of federal funds allocated to the proposed swap of the FBI headquarters in Washington for a new facility to be built with a public-private partnership will be enough to complete the project, the official in charge of the effort said Tuesday at a House committee hearing on the proposal.
Norman Dong, commissioner of the public building service at the General Services Administration, told lawmakers at a hearing of the public buildings panel of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee that a construction contract for the $2 billion-plus project should be signed by the end of calendar 2016.
"We are committed to the exchange as an important element in our strategy to deliver a new headquarters building for the FBI," Dong said.
The GSA wants to swap the site of the J. Edgar Hoover Building in downtown Washington with a private partner who will build a larger and more-secure facility on one of three sites outside the city in exchange for the 6.7 acres of prime real estate on Pennsylvania Avenue. Two of the acceptable sites identified by the GSA are in Maryland and one is in Virginia.
The GSA last week abandoned plans to swap two abandoned federal buildings in the Federal Triangle South area of Washington in exchange for a renovation of its headquarters but remains committed to the P3 approach for funding the new FBI building, Dong said.
"We believe the Hoover site has more development potential than the Federal Triangle South proposal," he said.
President Obama's proposed budget for fiscal 2017 includes $759 million for the FBI project in the GSA request and another $646 million for the FBI's construction fund.
Congress appropriated $390 million for preliminary planning and design work on the new FBI headquarters in the fiscal 2016 omnibus budget bill that was enacted in December.
"The funding from 2016 and the request for 2017 will fully address the costs of the FBI project," Dong said. "None of that money has yet been expended."
Dong declined to provide a total cost estimate for the project or how much the GSA expects to get for the Hoover Building site until negotiations are completed this summer with the four private groups that have been asked to submit bids on the project.
The current headquarters building is too small to accommodate the FBI staff and lacks the cyber-security technology needed for a modern crime- and terrorism-fighting organization, said Richard Haley II, chief financial officer for the FBI.
More than half of the FBI's headquarters staff is located outside the Hoover Building in 13 leased offices in the area, Haley said.
"This makes it extremely difficult to address rapidly developing threats and collaborate across divisions and programs," he said. "The J. Edgar Hoover building is incompatible with what the United States expects of the FBI."
Committee members said they are waiting to see detailed financial information on the project.
Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., the House Minority Whip who testified because his district includes one of the proposed sites, supported the project but called for a lease-to-own funding approach rather than a P3.
Hoyer told the panel that the GSA should sell the Hoover Building separately and fund the new FBI headquarters through annual appropriations.
"I've never been a big fan of the swap, which is because I think it complicates the transaction," Hoyer said. "I don't think it necessarily maximizes the value of that extraordinary piece of property."
The P3 arrangement may be too complex for the GSA, which has little experience with them, said Rep. Ander Crenshaw, R-Fla., at an Appropriations Committee panel hearing on Monday.
"I am very concerned by the size of this request and still believe GSA may not have the expertise to execute such a complex exchange," said Crenshaw, chairman of the general government subcommittee.
