Trump intervenes in FBI headquarters project

[ehrnst]

For years, FBI officials have raised alarms that decrepit conditions at its current headquarters, the J. Edgar Hoover Building, constitute serious security concerns. A year ago, federal officials had finally decided on three finalist locations in Maryland and Virginia, and Congress appropriated $913 million toward a project expected to cost more than $3 billion.

Six months after Trump entered the White House, his administration abandoned the plan, and it proposed in February that the government build a smaller headquarters to replace the Hoover building in downtown D.C. and move 2,300 other FBI staffers out of the Washington area altogether, to Alabama, Idaho and West Virginia. At the time, the decision baffled real estate experts and some members of Congress.
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Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) issued a statement Monday, saying “there is no question that the President stands to gain financially by keeping the FBI in its existing building and blocking any competition for the Trump Hotel from being developed there.”

"One has to wonder if the Trump administration’s decision to cancel the previous procurement process has anything to do with the proximity of the current FBI headquarters building to the Trump hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue,” Rep. Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) said in a statement Monday.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/07/30/trump-intervenes-fbi-headquarters-project/?utm_term=.d21c402d3468

[mahatmakanejeeves]

1. They were talking about this back in February. I wonder why it's in the news again.

Wonkblog Perspective

Did the government (FBI and GSA) just do the hotelier-in-chief a big favor?

By Steven Pearlstein February 14 [link:[e-mail]|Email the author]

For more than a decade now, the General Services Administration — the federal government’s real estate agency — has been looking to move the FBI from its current, outmoded headquarters location on Pennsylvania Avenue to a location that is bigger and easier to protect from a terrorist attack. And the thinking was that the current site was so valuable in terms of its potential for commercial development that by selling or swapping it, the government could generate enough money to pay most of the cost of a new building somewhere else. The spectacular revival of the east end of downtown Washington as a nightspot and a residential neighborhood in the last few years has only improved the financial viability of that strategy.

This week, however, the GSA, after a number of false starts, decided to scrap that plan and build a new FBI headquarters on its current site.

A GSA spokesman said that the decision to rebuild on the site was driven by “national security requirements.” That’s curious because if you were concerned about a terrorist attack, surely a better choice would be a secure campus like that at St. Elizabeths Hospital, rather than on one of the busiest thoroughfares in downtown Washington. ... From an economic perspective, that means the FBI site will not be developed for what is surely its highest and best economic use.
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So what has happened since the GSA announced its original plan to prompt this change in strategy? Well, one thing that has certainly changed is that a new luxury hotel has opened its doors just a few blocks down Pennsylvania Avenue in the old Post Office Building — a hotel that happens to be operated by none other than the Trump Organization. It's not clear to what degree President Trump was personally involved, but whether intended or not, the GSA’s decision to keep the FBI on the site has now eliminated the possibility of that kind of direct competition to the Trump International Hotel. The Trump Organization did not respond to a request for comment.
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Steven Pearlstein is a Post business and economics writer. He is also Robinson Professor of Public Affairs at George Mason University. Follow https://twitter.com/StevePearlstein

[honest.abe]

2. I think some new information came out confirming Trump's personal involvement in canceling the move.

https://www.axios.com/donald-trump-obsession-fbi-building-headquarters-65d36fb9-b1a2-42ca-8cbd-3dbbe59de907.html

It's becoming clear he didnt want a new hotel built on the FBI location that might compete with his nearby hotel.

Incredible conflicts of interest going on and he somehow gets away with it.