Photo by wallyg

Holy huge development opportunity, Batman!

The Post’s Capital Business Blog reports today that the federal government officially wants the FBI out of its massive headquarters on Pennsylvania Avenue, and is offering to swap the building for development of a campus elsewhere in the region:

In a solicitation to real estate developers Monday, GSA Acting Administrator Dan Tangherlini proposed swapping the Hoover building site — a valuable property on Pennsylvania Avenue — for the construction of a new, consolidated campus located in the Washington region.

“At a time when doing more with less is an absolute imperative, GSA is aggressively working to find new and innovative ways to save money and increase efficiency,” Tangherlini said in a statement. “An exchange of the FBI headquarters not only saves money, but it also promotes efficiency by consolidating staff into a single state-of-the-art facility, shrinking the federal real estate footprint and eliminating multiple leases.

Not only is the J. Edgar Hoover Building ugly as sin, but the feds have long declared that it is unfit for the FBI’s use. Prince George’s County officials have already expressed their interest in hosting a new FBI campus, though other surrounding jurisdictions will also likely pitch themselves as adequate locales for the law enforcement agency.

Whatever ends up at the Hoover building—and it will be a while before anything does—there is one certainty: it’ll be big. According to local blogger Topher Mathews of the Georgetown Metropolitan, the building has 40 percent more square footage than the massive CityCenter development being built in Gallery Place.