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14 December 2014

US Coast Guard Headquarters Eyeball

http://www.uscg.mil/stelizabeths/

The Coast Guard completed its move to the St. Elizabeths campus in December 2013.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/planned-homeland-security-headquarters-long-delayed-and-over-budget-now-in-doubt/2014/05/20/d0df2580-dc42-11e3-8009-71de85b9c527_story.html

Planned Homeland Security headquarters, long delayed and over budget, now in doubt

May 20, 2014

The construction of a massive new headquarters for the Department of Homeland Security, billed as critical for national security and the revitalization of Southeast Washington, is running more than $1.5 billion over budget, is 11 years behind schedule and may never be completed, according to planning documents and federal officials.

In the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the George W. Bush administration called for a new, centralized headquarters to strengthen the department’s ability to coordinate the fight against terrorism and respond to natural disasters. More than 50 historic buildings would be renovated and new ones erected on the grounds of St. Elizabeths, a onetime insane asylum with a panoramic view of the District.

The entire complex was to be finished as early as this year, at a cost of less than $3 billion, according to the initial plan.

Instead, with the exception of a Coast Guard building that opened last year, the grounds remain entirely undeveloped, with the occasional deer grazing amid the vacant Gothic Revival-style structures. The budget has ballooned to $4.5 billion, with completion pushed back to 2026. Even now, as Obama administration officials make the best of their limited funding, they have started design work for a second building that congressional aides and others familiar with the project say may never open.

A decade after work began, the St. Elizabeths venture — the capital region’s largest planned construction project since the Pentagon — has become a monumental example of Washington inefficiency and drift. Bedeviled by partisan brawling, it has been starved of funds by both Republicans and Democrats in Congress and received only lackluster support from the Obama administration, according to budget documents and interviews with current and former federal officials.

The crippling shortfall in funding has created a vicious cycle, causing delays that in turn inflated the projected price tag as construction costs escalated over time and DHS agencies — still scattered in more than 50 locations across the Washington area — have been signing expensive temporary leases.

Coast Guard Headquarters at West Campus Below, East Campus not Begun

15 April 2014

14 October 2013

15 July 2013

19 April 2013

17 December 2012

12 October 2012

About 20 June 2011. Note deep excavation of the hill at upper right to provide a flat foundation.

20 June 2011

29 October 2010

28 August 2010

1 April 2010