New FBI Chicago HQ is bigger than any outside Washington

By Susan S. Stevens
 
The Chicago office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has consolidated in the largest free-standing building used by the agency outside the nation’s capital. The agency also has room to grow in the new ten-story building at 2111 W. Roosevelt Rd.

“Formerly based in the Dirksen Federal Building, we also had space at seven separate locations across the Loop,” said Special Agent Ross Rice, spokesperson for the office. The FBI currently is using about 75% of the new building.

The 350,000 square foot building contains offices for about 650 employees, interrogation rooms, a crime laboratory, a polygraph section with three operators, a clinic with two nurses, a training classroom, a command post, and an entire floor devoted to evidence collection allowing items to be stored in boxes on shelves.

FBI Director Robert Mueller and Mayor Richard M. Daley were among the dignitaries at a Sept. 12 dedication ceremony at the $125 million building, for which the FBI is paying $17.3 million a year on a 14-year lease.

Marble walls lining the elevator areas and stainless steel panels in the elevators themselves are among the expensive touches the builder included in case the future brings another tenant, Rice said. Built by Higgins Development Partners, USAA Real Estate Co. is the owner.

The complex’s annex contains an auto shop and parking for 500 cars. A separate garage can hold 300 more cars.

Surrounding the complex is what looks like a typical wrought iron fence. It is not. “The perimeter is a crash-resistant barrier fence,” Rice said. ”It also is hard to climb.” In addition, entrances and exits have pop-up barricades to stop vehicles.

Staff in a control room monitor 160 surveillance cameras that digitally record the complex’s interior and exterior.

Since the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995, the FBI has preferred stand-alone buildings, Rice said, noting that was on the list of requirements during the search for a new location in Chicago.

“We could not find a site in downtown Chicago” that met all the needs, Rice said. The new location was the best the agency found, even though it is two miles away from downtown.

“There is no perfect building or location,” he said. A shuttle bus takes employees to and from the Loop for court hearings and meetings. “As far as day-to-day operations, you don’t really notice,” Rice said.

The Near West Side is the latest of several locations the FBI has used in Chicago. Since 1964, it had been housed in the Dirksen Building. The agency also operates satellite offices in Orland Park, Lisle, Rolling Meadows, and Rockford, IL, and at O’Hare and Midway airports. The Chicago FBI employs about 800 people.