Former Congressman William Lacy Clay Jr. calls the sprawling 97-acre site for the National Geospatial Agency’s (NGA) new Western headquarters in the St. Louis Place neighborhood “an oasis growing out of the desert.”
A $1.7-billion federal investment by the Dept. of Defense’s mapping agency in collaboration with the Air Force and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) will create a 712,000-sq-ft office and headquarters, parking garages and secure data storage for the agency’s geographic information systems (GIS) and other data. Jobs for 3,000 local employees will move from NGA’s existing south St. Louis facilities, some of which were built in the 1840s.