Upwards of 1,000 people descended on the Ronald Reagan Building & International Trade Center Monday to get a first glimpse of the government’s plans to transform the 157-year old St. Elizabeth’s mental institution into the new Department of Homeland Security headquarters.

It might have been the largest Industry Day for a federal project in recent memory. Attendees marveled at the swelling crowd filtering into the palatial Atrium Hall – an audience that became “standing room only” once the presentations began at 9 a.m.

“This is huge, this is massive,” said one man who owns a windows and glass company, but did not want to use his name. “I don’t know, if the economy weren’t so bad, whether you’d get even half these people.”

Maybe – or maybe not. The development of the old “St. E’s” campus, which is now owned by the General Services Administration (GSA), has a baseline price tag of $3.4 billion and has been billed as the largest federal construction project since the Pentagon was built in 1941. That’s a lot of money and a lot of work for vendors, bad economy or otherwise.

The enthusiasm was duly noted by Industry Day facilitator Toni Johnson. “It’s amazing what a few billion in projects can do to generate interest,” she joked. Humor aside, the day’s coordinators said they had nearly 1,000 registrants, mostly vendors, hungry for details. The last major announcement was in August, when GSA awarded a $435 million contract to Clark Design Build, LLC, a Washington metro area company, to begin designs on the new U.S Coast Guard facility – phase one of the overall project.

According to Chris Mills, St. Elizabeth’s Program Manager at DHS, the project has already been awarded $650 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (federal stimulus) funds. Of that, $200 million was awarded to DHS and $450 million to GSA. Furthermore, DHS received $100.7 million for St. E’s through FY 2009 appropriations, while GSA was allocated $346.6 million.

The St. E’s property spans 176 acres, including a West Campus, where most of the development will occur, and an East campus, which still has a working mental health facility run by the District of Colombia. The ambitious plans will incorporate 4.5 million gross square feet of building space and parking (52 of the 70 buildings on site will be restored to their High Victorian glory, according to officials) sitting on prime real estate overlooking downtown Washington and the Anacostia River below.

Officials hope the vast new complex will infuse the neighboring Congress Heights area with much-needed economic vitality, while finally consolidating DHS’s 22 member agencies and departments (about 14,000 employees), which are now flung across 48 locations and in some 100 different buildings.

“We’re scattered to the four winds. We are trying to harness this, trying to make it a single focus,” said Donald Bathurst, DHS’s Chief Administrative Officer . “It’s a tremendous opportunity for us to have a campus that will help us focus on our mission.”

Estimated Completion for the entire development is 2016. Phases 1a and 1b cover the construction of a state-of-the-art “green” Coast Guard facility, which will incorporate 1.5 million GSF of new construction and more than 179, 000 GSF of adaptive reuse space. Procurement for the first phase has already begun, with the award for the construction manager contract expected in the first quarter of 2010. Bidding for the massive technology integration program will begin sometime in the first quarter of the new year. Final occupancy of the Coast Guard facility is expected in mid-2013.

The procurement process for Phase 2, the development of the DHS administration HQ, including the secretary’s office, as well as the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the National Operations Center (NOC), has already begun and construction is expected to commence by the end of 2010. The project will include the massive renovation of the “Center Building” which was first designed by architect Thomas Walter, who also designed the dome at the U.S Capitol in 1851.

Phrase 3 will include the development of facilities to house Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). Procurement will begin in mid-2012, with contract awards by the spring of 2013.

Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, who represents D.C in Congress, told the Monday gathering that she will fight for the rest of the money, because aside from the homeland security benefits, she believes this development “will stimulate the economy.”

“This,” she said, “is not just another project, my friends.”

Kelley Vlahos is a Washington correspondent for Homeland Security Today