Land-swap idea for FBI headquarters draws hundreds of interested parties
Land-swap idea for FBI headquarters draws hundreds of interested parties
An idea to trade the FBI headquarters building in downtown Washington for a larger and more modernized site is looking like a winner.
More than 300 contracting and real estate professionals packed the General Services Administration’s still-under-renovation headquarters on Thursday to learn details of the project.
Delays in getting the standing-room-only crowd through security “bode pretty well for this project, and the amount of interest continues to grow,” said GSA's acting Administrator Dan Tangherlini. He linked his team’s work on moving the FBI to the GSA’s revised mission statement unveiled on Monday: “to deliver the best value in real estate, acquisition, and technology services to government and the American people.”
The “Industry Day” event expanded on a request for information GSA published in December seeking expert suggestions for sites in the greater Washington area that current owners could consider exchanging for the FBI’s aging and cramped J. Edgar Hoover building on prestigious Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest.
Tangherlini called the 39-year-old Hoover building “an ineffective asset that is not fulfilling its potential.” With space for only 54 percent of FBI headquarters employees in the squat structure, law enforcement and intelligence professionals “can’t collaborate the way we need them to, so its time has come,” he said. Another GSA official joked that the building has been dubbed “the only undeveloped site on Pennsylvania Avenue.”
http://www.govexec.com/management/2013/01/land-swap-fbi-headquarters-draws-hundreds-interested-parties/60769/?oref=river