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Chertoff revives bid for new CG HQ

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff is trying again this year to advance a plan to consolidate the headquarters for his department with a new Coast Guard headquarters on the site of a historic hospital in Southeast Washington, D.C.

Chertoff’s $50.5 billion fiscal 2009 budget request, unveiled Monday with the rest of the federal spending plan, includes a request for $120 million to move DHS and the Coast Guard from their current, separate headquarters into a proposed new state-of-the-art campus. The General Services Administration, which owns the site, also has requested $346 million this year to go forward with the project, Chertoff said.

The new location would be on the west campus of D.C.’s historic St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, a pre-Civil War hospital that has provided mental care to many noteworthy Americans, including presidential assassins and would-be assassins, and is on the National Register of Historic Places.

The complex’s historic status has held up the DHS and Coast Guard relocation since it was proposed in 2005, even after the District’s planning department recommended preserving several of the historic structures, building 6.5 million square feet of new office space for the DHS tenants and using the expansion to help revitalize the hospital’s downtrodden neighborhood.

St. Elizabeth’s and the GSA have completed a “master plan” for the new DHS campus that is scheduled for review by a set of planning hearings in March and April.

Chertoff asked Congress for money for the St. Elizabeth’s complex last year, but lawmakers didn’t approve the funds. He said he was “optimistic” that the project would be able to go forward as part of the 2009 budget.