ST. LOUIS — Almost 18 months into construction, the last steel beams are being set in place for the framing of a federal agency’s new $1.7 billion western headquarters in north St. Louis.
The steel framing for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s Next NGA West 700,000-square foot main office building is about half finished, said McCarthy HITT, the project's general contractor. Construction is expected to finish in 2024, after initially breaking ground in November 2019. The goal is for the 97-acre campus in the St. Louis Place neighborhood at Jefferson and Cast avenues to open in 2025. The agency’s 3,000 employees currently work out of a 200-year-old building on a campus near Soulard, in south St. Louis.
The topping out means that construction crews are about halfway through the process of erecting the 5,000 tons of steel that will go into the main building. All the steel used in the building was fabricated in the United States and set in place by local St. Louis workers, according to a news release.
The next phase of construction will enclose the main operations building. The new campus will also have two parking garages, a visitor control center, a remote inspection facility and a central utility plant.
The St. Louis Board of Aldermen has approved development restrictions near the NGA campus to allow the agency to operate without interference.
Read the full story on the St. Louis Business Journal website.
