(CNN) The Trump administration has settled on a location for the new US embassy in Jerusalem and plans to move into the facility by 2019, two senior administration officials tell CNN.

Rather than design and build a new embassy compound, which officials say could take several years and cost as much as a billion dollars, the State Department has decided to retrofit an existing US consular facility in the West Jerusalem neighborhood of Arnona, which sits near the Green Line, the de facto border of Israel before the 1967 war.

The scaled-down plan for the embassy will cut costs and allow Ambassador David Friedman and his staff to move there as early as next year after some security enhancements are made.

The current facility at the site is the US Consulate in Jerusalem, which handles relations with the Palestinians; the United States does not have a consular office in Ramallah.

The Arnona site was considered one of three possible options for a US embassy in Jerusalem. It may be the easiest logistical option, as it is the largest existing facility. A consular office just west of the Old City is much smaller, while an open plot that Israel leases to the Americans has never been developed.

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