Press Release
Source: ENR Midwest
Press Release
Press Contacts: Erik Cummins, Matt Hyams, Olivia Thomas
01.26.22
Former Congressman William Lacy Clay Jr., who is now a Pillsbury senior policy advisor, 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 Department 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.
NGA selected this north St. Louis location not only because of the available land, but also to bring development into the surrounding area, which has seen population and local services dwindle over decades of blight.
“Hopefully that sets an example to invest in an area that had previously never been invested in my lifetime,” says Clay, who pushed for more development in the mostly African American neighborhood over a 20-year congressional career representing it. “There’s absolutely no excuse anymore after the announcement of the $790-million city and county settlement over the St. Louis Rams relocation.”
Meanwhile, on February 5, the city of St. Louis celebrated the renaming a section of a north St. Louis road in honor of Congressman Clay.