FBI’s HQ to Displace National Children’s Museum in D.C.

The FBI headquarters relocation is now set to displace yet another entity at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, D.C.

The National Children’s Museum must vacate D.C.’s nearly 4 million-square-foot Ronald Reagan Building to make way for the FBI’s upcoming relocation, General Services Administrator Ed Forst told Congress this week. The museum, which is a nongovernmental, nonprofit organization, occupies about 30,000 square feet at the Regan Building. 

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) are also designated to move offices to allow for the FBI’s relocation. The Business Journals first reported the news. 

The FBI has for decades tried to move from the crumbling J. Edgar Hoover Building, and at one point settled on a 62-acre parcel in Greenbelt, Md. Yet the Kash Patel-led FBI and the Trump administration canceled that move last July when it chose the Regan Building instead. It’s unclear how much space the FBI intends to use at the complex. Congress fully funded the $1.5 billion move late last year. 

USAID and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) utilize the most amount of space at the building, though the former was effectively gutted by the Trump administration last year and the latter will eventually move into the Department of Homeland Security’s St. Elizabeth’s West campus underway on Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue. The EPA, General Services Administration and the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Center for Scholars also call the Reagan Building home. 

Finding a new home for the National Children’s Museum is a “priority” for the GSA, Forst told lawmakers at a House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee hearing this week, adding that he had already met with D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser to discuss the move. 

“This is an important thing for us to work on together; to not in any way abandon it in its important mission but help it get on to its next place,” Forst said at the hearing. 

The museum is aiming to expand its footprint at its future home to between 50,000 and 70,000 square feet, CEO Kiryn Hoffman told the Business Journals. While the museum doesn’t necessarily want to move — it has occupied the Reagan Building since 2020 — its 225,000 annual visitors regularly max out capacity, Hoffman said. 

The museum’s relocation options, or whether it will stay in the District, were not immediately clear. A spokesperson for the GSA did not immediately respond to a request for comment or more information. 

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