The Federal Reserve is remodeling its headquarters. Cost: $2.5 billion
WASHINGTON—Anyone with a recent home renovation project that suffered from rising costs, shortages and delays now has distinguished company: The Federal Reserve, the U.S. institution charged with controlling inflation, is also struggling to hold down expenses on its stately digs.
The central bank is in the middle of a long-running project to overhaul three adjacent office buildings overlooking the National Mall into a state-of-the-art campus. The price tag for the endeavor has swelled to nearly $2.5 billion, up from an estimate of $1.9 billion in 2019—an increase of about 34%.
Budget documents released at the end of last year show the cost of the overall project has inflated due to “significant increases” in the cost of steel, cement, wood and other materials that “far exceed standard cost escalations.”
Most of the overruns are for gutting and refurbishing two buildings: the Fed’s headquarters, finished in 1937 and named for then-Fed Chairman Marriner S. Eccles, and a neighboring building known as “FRB-East” for now. The Fed acquired that building, which opened in 1933, from the Interior Department five years ago. Renovations on both began last year and are expected to run until 2027.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/federal-reserve-headquarters-renovation-expenses-powell-977f4105
And these are the people who are supposed to be fighting inflation.
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local HQ.
In the upper floors the plumbing fixtures were gold, the walls and trim were mahogany. I still have a scrap of the mahogany that was discarded on the floor. It's a bookend. It's that dense and heavy.
The Fed spared no expense for their work space.
