Fairfax County leaders have not given up hope that Northern Virginia will ultimately land the new FBI headquarters.
As part of their 2025 legislative package slated for adoption tomorrow (Tuesday), county supervisors are reiterating their call to put the facility in Springfield, rather than a parcel in Greenbelt, Maryland, that the federal government selected last year.
Springfield remains the superior choice, the legislative priorities package contends.
“Fairfax County continues to believe that the Springfield site is the best option for the FBI, and would welcome such a relocation, as well as other similar federal relocations to the Springfield site,” the county says in its draft “Recommended Strategies and Principles” for the 2025-2026 session of Congress.
The site at 6808 Loisdale Road is currently home to a General Services Administration (GSA) warehouse, close to the headquarters of the Transportation Security Administration. It provides easy access and better proximity to FBI facilities in Quantico, Fairfax County officials say.
GSA efforts to find a new home for the federal law enforcement agency have been ongoing for nearly a generation, identifying three finalist locations in Springfield, Greenbelt and Landover in 2014. Virginia’s local and state leaders crossed the political divide to jointly stump for Springfield, but they were met by an equally hard push from Maryland leaders promoting options in their state.
Though a three-member panel that evaluated the sites concluded that the Virginia option was preferable, the GSA announced in November 2023 that it had selected the 61-acre Greenbelt site, stating that:
“GSA determined Greenbelt to be the best option for the FBI and the U.S. government because the site was the lowest cost to taxpayers, provided the greatest transportation access to FBI employees and visitors, and gave the government the most certainty on project-delivery schedule. It also provided the highest potential to advance sustainability and equity.”
After complaints from the Northern Virginia congressional delegation, the GSA’s inspector general began reviewing the decision-making process, but so far, no public report has been released.
The FBI’s national headquarters has been located at the J. Edgar Hoover Building at 935 Pennsylvania Avenue NW since 1974. While that aging building is expected to close after a new headquarters opens, some 750 to 1,000 FBI staff are likely to remain in D.C. to be close to U.S. Department of Justice offices.
Incoming president Donald Trump has advocated for keeping the FBI’s base in D.C. His previous administration scrapped the search for a new headquarters site in 2017, but an inspector general report later attributed the move to a lack of funding, rather than a result of political pressure.
President Joe Biden revived the search for a suburban site in 2022.
