Looks fine to me. A lot like the DOE building (which bespeaks government thrift). Trump just wants to tear down the FBI, leaving not one brick on top of another. Oh, and its building, too.
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Well, a little google maps research and it turns out this too is, predictably, all about Trump. The FBI building is across the street and 1 block east from the Old Post Office building, now the Trump International Hotel. He’s just trying to raise the local appeal / property values.
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Well that’s a weird looking building for sure. And I know a lot of Brutalist style buildings are pretty ugly. Prince Charles hates the ones in England too. But I think his complaints are more about the block upon block residential projects.
And the FBI building’s not so bad. It’s not Le Corbusier, but it’s not the worst thing I’ve ever seen. May be block like, but it has some interesting lines, and it’s just urban and business like.
I have a couple of friends who worked at the old Alley Theatre years ago.
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Holy cow! That’s so bad, it’s good!
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Oh LORD…the man does not want to be PRESIDENT. He wants to be KING where he can stick his fingers in anything that ‘interests’ him at any time. The WALL! The NFL!!! No. Korea, RUSSIA, and now ‘renovation’. I guess that whole deficit, shutting down the government BS was just that…a deflection to hammer on the Dems…this is why we never ever have nice things.
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The thing is, the Hoover building really is falling apart, and does need to be replaced. In any normal administration, there would be minor bickering about funding and location and so on and so forth, but everybody would eventually agree on some replacement. The uniquely terrible and damaging thing about Donald Trump is that he destroys this process. Everything he touches turns to shit.
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Translation: Russia wants to plant a few bugs in the FBI.
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He’s got a contractor in Russia that’s volunteering to do the work cheap!
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Well falling apart’s a different issue. I had no idea about that and if the building’s structurally unsound, then of course something needs to be done.
But to hear Trump go on like an arbiter of architectural style is just irritating. He’s a know nothing and his own buildings show it.
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True, but it’s beautiful on the inside.
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It really is an ugly building. There are few buildings in the brutalist style that are beautiful. But that is not enough reason to replace it.
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The FBI worked for several years, identifying sites for a new building during the last administration. Most were in the suburbs, with at least one near a Metro terminus. Congress never appropriated money for a new building, so all of this is in limbo.
The design of the current building makes it impractical to conevrt it to other uses—it’s not set-up like a commercial office building and the floor plans would not easily accommodate conversion to residential either. It’s also a poor candidate for cost-effective renovation, especially given the likely desire to tighten security further and possibly have some sort of perimeter (which argues for a suburban or obscure DC location). The security added to the building post-9/11 makes it real buzzkill to that block–there’s no real activity there, compared with comparably sized superblock buildings like the World Bank.
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In other words, Trump knows just the contractors to do the job, with a nice kickback to president idiot.
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The new building is to be designed by the same minds behind the first US embassy in Moscow!
https://www.nytimes.com/1988/11/15/world/the-bugged-embassy-case-what-went-wrong.html
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I will gladly settle for seeing his name on an FBI press release, if you know what I mean.
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Follow the money. Who will get the bids for everything. Even if they do need a new building, cancelling the tax break should provide funds for just about everything needed.
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Shit…I’m surprised he didn’t propose renting a floor of the trump hotel to them.
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He fervently believes that by kicking out all the FBI folks, claiming they have to vacate the building, he will slow down if not entirely stall the ever-widening investigation into all his wrongdoing. Especially before the mid-terms!
Fat chance, Orangebutt!
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From reading that section of the Wikipedia article, it seems this is classic government stupid. Started out cheap. “Maintained” on the cheap. Now lots of dithering around and hand-wringing on what to do about it. Costs too much. Woe is us. Ultimately, the building will be replaced with something. It will end up costing many times what it would have cost if the reality of the situation had been accepted long ago. No lessons will be learned. The new building will be built on the cheap. And maintained on the cheap…
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