Photo by wallyg

The FBI may be moving out of its Brutalist headquarters on Pennsylvania Avenue, but a pair of D.C. legislators don’t simply want to surrender the agency to a suburban campus.

Today Councilmembers Vincent Orange (D-At Large) and Jack Evans (D-Ward 2) introduced a bill that would back Mayor Vince Gray and D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton’s attempts to keep the FBI from decamping to Maryland or Virginia. As he introduced the bill this morning, Orange argued that the FBI had been in D.C. since 1908 and brought workers to the city and tourists to the building, though tours of the J. Edgar Hoover Building have not taken place for years.

Multiple counties in both Maryland and Virginia have expressed their interest in playing host to a new FBI HQ; earlier this month, Rep. Jim Moran (D-Va.) brought representatives from Virginia counties together to make a joint request that the police agency relocate there instead of Maryland.

In his comments, Orange took a direct swipe at D.C.’s neighbors, saying that neither had the transportation infrastructure needed to sustain the agency’s new HQ. He also said that D.C. had various locations it could offer up, including the St. Elizabeths campus in Southeast, Buzzard Point in Southwest, and the Walter Reed Medical Center campus on Northwest.

Whatever ends up happening with the FBI, its building on Pennsylvania Avenue is becoming the hottest development opportunity in town. In mid-January, hundreds of people gathered to hear the General Services Administration explain what it had in mind for the site; requests for proposals are due from developers in March.