The federal agency that led the search for a new FBI headquarters site provided some inaccurate estimates of the costs associated with a Springfield relocation, possibly hampering Fairfax County’s bid for the project, a new report found.
The inaccurate cost information was one of a few issues with the site selection process identified by the inspector general for the General Services Administration (GSA), which began a review in late 2023 in response to complaints from Northern Virginia’s Congressional delegation and concerns raised by the FBI.
Released yesterday (Monday), the report seems to at least partially vindicate Virginia elected officials who had blasted the GSA’s decision on Nov. 9, 2023 to award the long-gestating project to Greenbelt, one of two Maryland locations competing with the GSA’s own Franconia Warehouse Complex at 6808 Loisdale Road.
Arguing that the Springfield site was “clearly” more appropriate, given its proximity to the FBI’s training academy in Quantico, among other factors, both Democratic and Republican politicians representing the Commonwealth accused their Maryland counterparts of using political pressure to get the site selection criteria changed.
Former GSA Commissioner of Public Buildings Nina Albert, the appointed site selection authority charged with making a final decision, also came under scrutiny for her past employment with the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA), which owns the 61-acre Greenbelt site.
In a letter reported by the Washington Post, then-FBI director Christopher Wray rejected Greenbelt as the new headquarters location and urged the GSA to restart the search process, suggesting Albert’s affiliation with Metro may have created a conflict of interest that led her to deviate from a three-person selection panel that unanimously recommended the Springfield site.
The inspector general’s report “found no evidence” of ethical violations by Albert, affirming the conclusion that the GSA’s legal team came to when she was designated as the site selection authority in 2021. However, it did identify other inadequacies in the search process.
“I appreciate the Inspector General confirming that the GSA’s decision on the FBI HQ site selection was based on a terribly flawed process at best,” Fairfax County Board of Supervisors Chairman Jeff McKay said when asked about the new report. “I urge the GSA to take all report findings seriously and revisit its decision.”
Report questions cost estimates, selection criteria
In its report, the inspector general says the GSA overshot the costs of relocating the current tenants of the Springfield site to make way for a new FBI hub by at least $3.3 million, because its $51.6 million estimate was calculated based on the warehouse’s entire 729,442 square feet of usable space without taking growing vacancies into account.
According to the report, the estimate was a rough figure from April 2022 that the GSA used when evaluating the site’s viability, but it never got updated as the search process advanced, even though the agency had intended to conduct a more detailed analysis.
“GSA’s lack of due diligence and lack of effort in creating accurate and up-to-date forced move cost estimates did not conform with its duty to ensure that it delivers the best value to taxpayers,” the report says.
The inaccuracy was exacerbated when the GSA revised its site selection criteria in July 2023 to place a greater emphasis on cost — a change that was made in response to concerns from Maryland officials and that the agency ultimately failed to justify, the inspector general says:
We found that the new cost element, Relative Cost Difference of Expected Construction Start Dates, for each site did not justify any increase to the Cost Criterion weight because it ultimately did not represent any real cost burden to the Federal Government. Similarly, the cost of off-site improvements, a cost element that GSA retained from the initial Plan, also had no significant bearing on cost to the Federal Government. In addition, although GSA doubled the weight of the Cost Criterion, the costs that the Panel and the Site Selection Authority relied on to select the most advantageous site represented a fraction of the overall project costs to build a new FBI headquarters.
The criteria revisions also gave greater weight to “advancing equity” and sustainability, another move that arguably benefitted the Maryland sites, which were both in majority-Black Prince George’s County. The mostly county-level data presented to the selection panel and authority didn’t provide enough specific information to distinguish the Greenbelt and Landover sites, the inspector general’s report says.
The report also takes issue with GSA officials, including then-administrator Robin Carnahan, not keeping records of cell phone communications about the FBI headquarters search.
In addition to requiring that employees preserve messages about the FBI relocation and other future projects, the report recommends that the GSA’s public buildings service commissioner establish policies for site selection processes to ensure the criteria is “sufficiently justified and supported” and the data used is “relevant, accurate, complete, and current.”
In a letter included with the report, Carnahan, who left the GSA after President Donald Trump took office on Jan. 20, defended the criteria changes and cost estimates used for the FBI project.
“While these findings are worth careful consideration, in my view none of them undermine the overall integrity of the process, the Site Selection Panel’s recommendation, or the Site Selection Authority’s decision,” Carnahan wrote. “Your report reinforces my belief in the fairness and transparency of our plan and process, and my conclusion that all those involved did their best to recommend and ultimately select a site that would provide the best value for the FBI and the public.”
While the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors continues to hold out hope that the federal government might reconsider moving the FBI to Springfield, Trump scrapped plans to move the headquarters out of D.C. during his first term in the White House, and it’s unclear whether his stance has changed.
At the moment, his administration appears to be mostly focused on purging the FBI’s ranks, particularly of any officials involved in investigations and prosecutions related to the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol.
