F.B.I. to Move Headquarters to Maryland

The Biden administration has chosen a vacant lot in Greenbelt, Md., for the new headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, despite the lingering concerns of some senior bureau officials, four people familiar with the situation said late Wednesday.

The plan, which is expected to be made public on Thursday, could still face internal hurdles and zoning or funding issues, but if it goes through it would end one of the most hotly contested bureaucratic decisions of the past decade.

Under the proposal, the sprawling campus will be near the Greenbelt Metro station as part of a larger multiuse development. It would replace the crumbling J. Edgar Hoover Building in downtown Washington, which is sheathed in netting to shield passers-by from falling concrete.

The bureau will maintain a smaller office in downtown Washington, a senior law enforcement official said. Congress would ultimately have to fund a new campus, and lawmakers in Virginia and Maryland have fought for years over where the F.B.I.’s headquarters should be.

The decision by the General Services Administration, which oversees the management and development of federal properties, was reported earlier by The Washington Post.

F.B.I. officials have privately expressed their concerns about the process of developing the site — but not its location outside Washington, according to an official with knowledge of the situation who requested anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. The official did not specify the nature of those concerns.

Leaders in Prince George’s County, one of the largest majority-Black suburbs in the nation, have long pitched the site as a vital economic project. The area offers ample space for expansion and access to public transportation and major highways, they have said, pointing to a highly trained work force and a greater variety of merchants in the area than the somewhat isolated Hoover building.

But a senior official briefed on the process said the choice of Greenbelt was based on several factors, including the availability of the land and the “racial equities” of building in Prince George’s County.

In 2018, President Donald J. Trump scrapped longstanding plans to select a site in either Virginia or Maryland, dating from the Obama administration. At the time, Mr. Trump’s advisers cited a lack of available congressional funding needed to pay the $3 billion cost of building in the suburbs, and the inconvenience associated with relocating about 10,000 employees outside the city.

Instead, the Trump administration proposed rebuilding the headquarters at its existing site and permanently moving more than 2,000 F.B.I. employees to Alabama, West Virginia and other states.

Lawmakers in Maryland and Virginia reversed that reversal after he left office, inserting language into a federal funding bill that revived the plan to move the bureau to the suburbs.

Mr. Trump’s unusual interest in the building (a favorite topic of Oval Office discussion early in his administration) and its proximity to his now defunct hotel across the street from the Hoover building raised eyebrows among some Democrats. They claimed that he wanted to prevent the Hoover site from being redeveloped into a competing project, perhaps another luxury hotel.

After a five-year investigation, the Justice Department’s inspector general determined that the decision was most likely motivated by funding and logistical issues, not by an effort by Mr. Trump to personally intervene to protect his property in downtown Washington from a possible rival.

Several F.B.I. witnesses, including the bureau’s director, Christopher A. Wray, told the inspector general that they had been given authority to determine the location of the new headquarters.

They chose to rebuild at the existing location because it would allow them to concentrate their work force in a central location next to the Justice Department, and would cost less, the officials said.