FBI Moving HQ to Reagan Building Down the Street

The FBI has (once again) picked a new location for a new headquarters — this time just down the street from its crumbling, longtime home in Washington, D.C.

The bureau will relocate to the Ronald Reagan Building complex at 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue NW. The FBI has called the 2.8 million-square-foot J. Edgar Hoover Building home since 1975. The amount of space that the FBI will take at the Reagan Building, along with an exact schedule of when it will relocate, were not immediately clear.

A spokesperson for the FBI declined to comment further. The Regan Building — along with the International Trade Center, with which it shares a roof — is the largest building in the District at nearly 3.9 million square feet.

The search for a new FBI headquarters has lasted nearly two decades, though multiple attempts ultimately failed due to cost, logistical challenges or political intervention. Most recently, the bureau in 2023 chose Greenbelt, Md., as the location for its new HQ, despite vows from President Donald Trump to cancel the move. 

“Moving to the Ronald Reagan Building is the most cost effective and resource efficient way to carry out our mission to protect the American people and uphold the constitution,” Kash Patel, FBI director, said in a statement. 

Michael Peters, the General Services Administration‘s Public Buildings Service commissioner, concurred with Patel, claiming that the move would ultimately save over $300 million in taxpayer dollars on deferred maintenance at the Hoover Building. 

The Reagan Building and International Trade Center complex was the first federal property in D.C. built specifically for both public and private-sector use. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) are two of the largest tenants there, while the Environmental Protection Agency, GSA and the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Center for Scholars (a think tank chartered by Congress) also use space at the property. 

Many of those tenants were already set to depart the building before the FBI decision, however. The Trump administration effectively dissolved USAID earlier this year; the president issued an executive order in March directing the elimination of entities like the Wilson Center; and CBP — an agency under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) — will eventually relocate to the DHS’s new headquarters at the St. Elizabeths West Campus in Southeast D.C.

Nick Trombola can be reached at ntrombola@commercialobserver.com.