Photo by wallyg

Mayor Vince Gray intends to suggest that the FBI relocates to Poplar Point in Southeast D.C. when it vacates the crummy old J. Edgar Hoover building, The Washington Post’s Jonathan O’Connell reports.

With the FBI planning on moving in the next few years, the District, Maryland, and Virginia are all eyeing plots of land that could serve as the bureau’s next home. Poplar Point, O’Connell writes, would appear to have several advantages:

Poplar Point, located between Interstate 295 and the Anacostia River, meets many of the criteria that the FBI and the General Services Administration, which manages real estate for the federal government, have outlined in a search for ideas about where to build a new campus for the FBI. The 110-acre waterfront property in Southeast D.C. has easy highway access, is close to Metro (the Anacostia stop, on the Green Line) and is already owned by the federal government.

That would be nice and convenient for FBI agents, but there would be little financial benefit to the District in the agency moving to Poplar Point. Federal property is not taxed, and an FBI campus would use up as much as half the 110-acre plot, leaving little by the way of private development. Furthermore, any FBI building would be heavily fortified, which might not be the best way to attract neighbors.

However, there is one thing that keeping the FBI in the District would achieve. If the bureau were to move to Poplar Point, that would invalidate the harebrained scenario favored by some of D.C.’s elected officials in which the city “trades” the FBI with Prince George’s County in exchange for the Washington football team.