The J. Edgar Hoover Building will close permanently after the FBI moves its headquarters to the Ronald Reagan Building, FBI Director Kash Patel said on Friday. File Photo by Roger L. Wollenberg/UPI | License Photo
Dec. 27 (UPI) — The FBI Hoover headquarters in Washington soon will be vacant as the federal law enforcement agency prepares to make a permanent exit in favor of a more modern structure.
FBI Director Kash Patel plans to make a permanent move into the former headquarters of the recently closed U.S. Agency for International Development sometime soon, according to Bloomberg.
“After more than 20 years of failed attempts, we finalized a plan to permanently close the FBI’s Hoover headquarters and move the workforce into a safe, modern facility,” Patel said in a social media post on Friday.
Moving into the former USAID headquarters will save taxpayers almost $5 billion, which was allocated to build a new FBI headquarters that would not have opened until 2035, Patel said.
“We scrapped that plan,” he explained. “Instead, we selected the already-existing Reagan Building, saving billions and allowing the transition to begin immediately with required safety and infrastructure upgrades underway.”
When the improvements are done, Patel said the FBI staff will move into the Reagan Building, which is located at 1300 Pennsylvania Ave. N.W., between the White House and the Capitol. He did not say when the move might occur.
The Hoover Building will be shut down after the FBI vacates it, the FBI director added.
While Patel said the move will save taxpayers billions of dollars, Maryland lawmakers are not happy about the change in plans.
Congress had app