Cops Nix Move to Southeast Facility

In April, the city announced it would be moving police headquarters from its longtime home in Judiciary Sqaure to a old printing plant on Virginia Avenue SE. Also planned to be part of the move were various other units, including violent crimes and evidence control, and the 1st District headquarters, currently at 4th and E Streets SW, which needs to clear out to make room for a long-planned crime lab.

Today, though, the city’s Office of Property Management announced that those plans have fallen apart because they were, according to a press release, “too expensive for the District.” But OPM spokesperson Bill Rice says plans for the crime lab are still “full steam ahead.”

“The mayor’s committed to it,” he says, “Everybody’s committed to it.”

That means the 1D headquarters still need a new home by early 2009, and Rice says a search for what will likely be a “swing space” is underway. Central headquarters and the other units will remain in their current homes indefinitely, he says.

Full press release after the jump.

District Cancels MPD Move to 225 Virginia Avenue, SE

Washington, DC)—Lars Etzkorn, Director of the DC Office of Property Management (OPM), today announced that OPM has canceled the move of major elements of the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) to the former Washington Star/Post printing facility at 225 Virginia Avenue, SE.

“We have found this deal to be too expensive for the District,” Etzkorn said. “Fortunately we realized before it was too late that forcing three dissimilar police functions in this building (a local police station and its cell-block, a warehouse for secure evidence storage along with regular office space) is not cost effective. In addition, we have found the facility to be inconsistent with the adjacent neighborhood. OPM is now studying the future of the building.”

When the lease was signed in December 2006, the following MPD elements were planned to move to 225 Virginia Ave., SE: evidence storage, violent crimes, narcotics and special investigation, special operations, the superintendent of detectives, MPD Headquarters and the First District Station now in Southwest.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 8th, 2007 at 3:11 pm and is filed under Bureaucracy, Cops, Office of Property Management, Real Estate. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.