Federal officials have decided the FBI will leave its iconic but decaying headquarters in downtown Washington for the Maryland suburbs, multiple people familiar with the decision said Wednesday. The move follows years of pointed arguments about where the multibillion dollar project should land.

But the decision to build the massive project in Prince George’s County won’t necessarily end the debate. The FBI has raised concerns about the site-selection process in recent months, according to a person familiar with the internal discussions who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe them. The person declined to further describe the concerns. An FBI spokeswoman referred questions to the General Services Administration, the federal agency overseeing the process.

The headquarters complex would be built on an empty 61-acre plot outside the Greenbelt Metro station - the marquee tenant in a proposed mixed-use development site that would include apartments, a hotel and retail, and could bring billions of dollars of new tax revenue to the county.

Maryland leaders had pitched Greenbelt in Prince George’s, a majority-Black county just outside the nation’s capital, as a Metro-accessible site that would deliver on President Biden’s promise to invest in historically underfunded communities. Local officials in Virginia and D.C. had also lobbied hard for the project, viewed as a crown jewel for its associated jobs, prestige and economic development.

For more than a decade, local and federal leaders and real estate developers jockeyed over who would build and host a modern new FBI headquarters serving thousands of employees. The high-stakes process has been delayed and punctured by politics, with governors and members of Congress aggressively trying to sway the decision-makers.

President Donald Trump in 2018 jumped in at one point, putting the entire project in limbo.

The FBI — located in the large, Brutalist-style J. Edgar Hoover Building on Pennsylvania Avenue NW since 1975 — has said it needs new headquarters to consolidate 11,000 personnel from more than a dozen locations around the region. The federal law enforcement agency is expected to still have some office presence in the District, though it is unclear if that space will remain at the current location or move elsewhere.

A new headquarters campus must be funded by Congress, will take years to build, and a developer has not yet been selected.

The GSA, which has been overseeing the process, manages federal real estate for the federal government. Over the years, the agency developed a number of factors for officials to consider when making the decision, including cost, transportation access and proximity to other law enforcement buildings.

D.C. initially lobbied to keep the headquarters in the city. In 2013, then-Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D) proposed Poplar Point — waterfront property in Southeast Washington near the Anacostia Metro station. But the GSA said the size required for the FBI facility meant a suburban site near the Capital Beltway was needed. The agency whittled the competition down to three finalists: Greenbelt and Landover, both in Prince George’s County, and Springfield, in Fairfax County, Va.

FBI leaders have long said they want to remain in D.C. and rebuild their current headquarters, where they have quick access to the Justice Department across the street and high-level visibility as a public-facing symbol of law and order between the White House and the U.S. Capitol. Every morning, top Justice Department and FBI leaders gather for an in-person meeting in a secure room at the Justice Department. That said, the urban location is far smaller than the other sites, sits on more expensive land and creates challenges from a security standpoint.

In 2018, Trump canceled the selection process and scrapped the three finalists. He proposed keeping the headquarters on Pennsylvania Avenue and moving 2,300 workers out of the Washington area altogether to Alabama, Idaho and West Virginia. Members of Congress were livid, accusing Trump of derailing the plans to benefit his namesake hotel — which has since closed — located a short distance away on Pennsylvania Avenue.

Once Trump was out of office, lawmakers in Maryland and Virginia secured language in a 2022 federal spending plan to again steer the headquarters to one of their suburban sites.

On the Virginia side, lawmakers touted the Springfield site’s location, close to other national security assets. The GSA had said that proximity to other FBI facilities — including Quantico, the FBI training facility in Virginia — would be the most important criteria.

Maryland leaders argued that both of their two finalist sites in Prince George’s County would be cheaper to build than in Springfield. The county has not historically been selected for big government projects, and leaders said that doing so would show that the Biden administration values equity.

The decision was finalized in recent weeks after a three-person panel, consisting of two GSA representatives and one FBI leader, submitted a recommendation to a senior GSA official. That official was charged with either accepting or rejecting the choice, according to criteria GSA established for the selection process. The White House was then informed of the agency’s decision.

In December, in his final days as House majority leader, Rep. Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) held up the entire omnibus spending bill to get language added that opened the door to changing the selection criteria. The move ultimately helped tip the scales in Maryland’s favor by reducing the importance of proximity to Quantico.

Hoyer touted the importance of a the project on the House floor on Wednesday, arguing against a measure from Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) that would prohibit including funds for acquiring property for a new headquarters building as part of a major federal funding bill.

Gaetz, one of a group of Republican lawmakers who has attacked the FBI over its criminal investigations of Trump, said agents “deserve to sit in the rat-invested J. Edgar Hoover building until they get their act straight.” Hoyer — noting the “present building is falling down” and there is netting around it to protect people on the sidewalk from falling concrete — said the new headquarters could not afford another delay after more than a decade of negotiations.

“I’m not totally objective — they’re going to build it somewhere, in this region. I live in this region. I’m supportive of this region,” Hoyer said, without giving any indication of where specifically he hoped it would be built. “This building, when and if it’s built, is going to be built sometime in the future, but is absolutely essential.”

Erin Cox, Meagan Flynn and Tyler Pager contributed to this report.