Norton To Speak At Coastguard Headquarters Building Naming, Today

Press Release

Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) will speak at the naming ceremony for the Douglas A. Munro Coast Guard Headquarters Building on the St. Elizabeths West Campus today at 2:15 p.m., at 2703 Martin Luther King, Jr. Avenue SE. As Coast Guard employees began moving to the building in August, Norton's bill to name the building was signed by the President. The building is named for Signalman First Class Munro, the Coast Guard's only Medal of Honor recipient, who died heroically during a volunteer assignment in World War II. The Coast Guard headquarters marks the first time the federal government has located a federal agency east of the Anacostia River. As the leading Democratic member on the Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings, and Emergency Management, Norton took steps to ensure that the new Department of Homeland Security (DHS) headquarters complex will help reinvigorate Martin Luther King, Jr. Avenue, Ward 8's major commercial street.

"The naming ceremony is an appropriate culmination of our long-fought battle to bring the state-of-the-art headquarters to the St. Elizabeths Campus, east of the Anacostia River," said Norton. "Coast Guard employees will now be working in a building that will be officially named for one of their own."

Norton, who led a preview tour of the new Coast Guard headquarters for the D.C. community and spoke at the building's ribbon-cutting in July, secured funding for the 1.1-million-square-foot Coast Guard headquarters. The building will house 3,700 Coast Guard civilian and military employees. For fiscal year 2014, Norton successfully urged the President to include $367,031,000 for continued construction of the consolidated DHS headquarters on the West Campus, indicating the Administration's ongoing support of the complex of several buildings and its recognition of the long-term cost savingsthat come from consolidating agencies and moving them from leased office space into federally owned space. Also included in the President's fiscal year 2014 budget is Norton's request for $9.8 million for D.C. to jumpstart redevelopment of the St. Elizabeths East Campus, where one of the DHS buildings is to be located, a valuable anchor for the D.C.-owned side of St. Elizabeths.

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