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The directorate of the Federal Bureau of Investigation has declared a historic move: the agency will shutter for good its sprawling headquarters and transition personnel to already established facilities.

Strategic Move for the Top Investigative Organization

According to a new statement, the ageing J. Edgar Hoover Building, a fixture in downtown DC, will be decommissioned. The workforce will be housed in already built offices elsewhere.

This operational transition will see a number of personnel moving into offices within the Reagan Building, which previously housed another federal agency.

“Finally, after years of delay, we finalized a plan to forever shutter the FBI’s Hoover headquarters and move the workforce into a state-of-the-art location,” officials said.

Fiscal Responsibility and National Security Focus

The decision is described as a way to better allocate funding. Leadership stated that this relocation focuses spending appropriately: on national security, law enforcement, and protecting national security.

It is also meant to providing the agency's personnel with superior resources at a fraction of the cost compared to maintaining the current headquarters.

Political Controversies and the Building's Legacy

This decision comes after previous legal controversies concerning the agency's future home. Earlier, officials from a nearby state had filed a lawsuit over the scrapping of a congressional plan to move the headquarters to their jurisdiction, arguing that appropriations had already been allocated by lawmakers for that purpose.

The J. Edgar Hoover Building itself is a notable example of concrete-heavy design, planned and erected in the mid-20th century. Its aesthetic has long been a point of criticism, as it broke with the look of most government structures in the capital.

Its own namesake, J. Edgar Hoover, was reportedly critical of the building, once lambasting it as “the ugliest building ever constructed in the history of Washington.”