Image from the “Welcome Home FBI” website.

Prince George’s County and Maryland have decided to throw their weight behind putting the FBI at the Greenbelt Metro station, but developer Walton North America hasn’t given up lobbying for it to go at the 479-acre, non-transit-oriented Westphalia development out past Joint Base Andrews.

We received an email from the PR firm Edelman about a new website they are launching on behalf of Walton. The site, called “A Welcome Home for the FBI,” argues that “Westphalia Town Center would provide a secure, state-of-the-art campus for the FBI within a vibrant community where FBI employees and their families can live, work and play,” and that “Westphalia Town Center would be a win-win-win for FBI employees and their families, as well as Prince George’s County residents and businesses.”

There’s even a map, captioned, “Westphalia Town Center provides many convenient transportation options.” Does it, now?

Image from the “Welcome Home FBI” website, modified by the author.

While Westphalia is located next to the Capital Beltway and Pennsylvania Avenue and adjacent to Joint Base Andrews, it’s not on or near a Metro line, MARC train, or the planned Purple Line. I’ve placed a star around potential spots for the FBI that are on Metro: Greenbelt, Franconia-Springfield (Fairfax’s proposal), and two suggestions from Greater Greater Washington contributors, Morgan Boulevard and Suitland.

(This map actually shows Metro in entirely the wrong place. Notice how the Orange and Blue Lines appear under the Potomac around where Smithsonian station would be. The Red Line crosses into Maryland east of DC’s the northern point, not west. This map doesn’t show the Blue Line out to the Beltway at all, and the southern Green Line actually runs along Suitland Parkway.

It clearly looks as though this map originally had no Metro at all, and the designers hastily slapped the Metro lines on without sizing and positioning them right. Perhaps this illustrates how much Westphalia really thinks about transit.)

Walton is so eager for the FBI that they recently offered to fund a bus line to Branch Avenue Metro. Unfortunately, a bus is unlikely to draw nearly the percentage of FBI workers that a Metro site would. The county has explored ways to extend the Green Line to Westphalia, but no serious planning has been done for it and nobody, including Walton, has any idea of how to pay for it.

As a greenfield, largely undeveloped site, Westphalia will require lots of new, expensive infrastructure whose long-term costs will get pushed onto the public. That spending will ultimately weaken pressure to build in existing communities where there’s already underused transportation infrastructure, at the Metro stations. Those communities, however, don’t have PR firms to push the government to put jobs there.

Putting the FBI in Prince George’s County is the right move. The east side of the region has not gotten its share of federal or private jobs, forcing people to travel long distances from east to west. The FBI wants a large security fortress, which is incompatible with potential locations in central DC.

An site that is short walk from one of Prince George’s 15 Metro stations, however, could house a large high-security complex and also catalyze walkable transit-oriented development closer to the station. This would maximize the value we get from our existing regional transportation network. With so many available Metro-accessible sites in Prince George’s, Westphalia is not a good spot for the FBI.