The General Services Administration and FBI said Friday they are tweaking the scoring criteria for a new suburban FBI headquarters, increasing the focus on cost and equity while reducing that of “proximity to mission-related locations.”
The changes, which appear on first blush to favor Prince George’s County’s two finalists over Springfield in Northern Virginia, follows months of lobbying from Maryland officials, who complained that the initial criteria put too much emphasis on access to Quantico, home to the FBI Academy and other agency resources.
Search leaders met with officials from Virginia and Maryland in the last couple of months, and these changes, the GSA said, are the result of those consultations.
“The GSA didn’t pluck its initial criteria out of thin air — it spent years talking to experts and carefully deliberating on what is best for the mission of the FBI,” Virginia Sens. Mark Warner and Tim Kaine said in a joint statement Friday afternoon. “While we are concerned that these changes to the criteria will further delay what has already been a drawn-out, decade-long process to select a new site to replace the dilapidated headquarters downtown, we remain confident that Virginia continues to be a home run in every category, and encourage the GSA to draw this process to a close sooner rather than later.”
