Top-secret work being done on the bunker beneath the now-demolished East Wing of the White House is the reason work began before statutorily required reviews were conducted on the ballroom that President Donald Trump is building, Joshua Fisher, director of the Office of Management and Budget, said in a meeting earlier this month with the National Capital Planning Commission, CNN reported.
“There are some things regarding this project that are, frankly, of top-secret nature that we are currently working on,” Fisher said at the Jan. 8 meeting.
The National Capital Planning Commission is one of two bodies authorized by federal law to review building projects in the National Mall area of Washington, D.C., while they’re still in their planning stages. The other is the D.C. Commission of Fine Arts.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation in December sued President Trump, the General Services Administration and other agencies involved in the project to force the work to stop until project reviews have been undertaken. A federal judge has since ruled that work can continue as long as construction crews don’t do any below-ground work that would determine how and where the final ballroom structure will exist.
The bunker under the East Wing was constructed in 1941 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The bunker has been described as a submarine-like structure that houses the presidential emergency operations center, or PEOC, that’s designed to withstand a nuclear explosion.
“The PEOC is used during emergencies,” Jonathan Wackrow, a former U.S. Secret Service agent who’s now a CNN contributor, said in the CNN article. “It’s not something that everybody goes to.”
Vice President Dick Cheney was evacuated to the bunker before the attack on the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.
“All the infrastructure is 1940s infrastructure,” a source familiar with the space told CNN. It’s a “self-contained unit, [with] separate power backups, separate water backups, separate air filtration.” Facilities Dive hasn’t independently verified the information the source told CNN.
In essence, there are two projects under construction where the East Wing used to be, Matthew Quinn, deputy director of the U.S. Secret Service, suggested in a court filing, according to a Politico report published in E&E News: the ballroom and the revamped bunker that will sit under it.
It’s this second project, the bunker, that must continue regardless of any changes made to the ballroom, Quinn suggested. “Any pause in construction, even temporarily, would … hamper the Secret Service’s ability to meet its statutory obligations and protective mission,” he said in the court filing.
The White House alluded to the national security aspect of the project when Trump announced it in July. “President Trump has held several meetings with … the White House Military Office, and the United States Secret Service to discuss design features and planning,” the White House statement said at the time.
When first announced, the plan was for the ballroom to be 90,000 square feet — close to the size of two football fields — seat 650 people and cost $200 million to complete, with the cost coming from private donors. In updated plans released earlier this month, the building will have two levels, with a 22,000-square foot banquet room on the main level and offices and other facilities on the second floor, Bloomberg reported. The project is expected to cost closer to $400 million, The Hill reported.
The ballroom’s original architect, McCrery Architects, a specialist in neoclassical designs, has been replaced with Shalom Baranes Associates, which led the project to rebuild and fortify the Pentagon after the 9/11 attack.
