The Next NGA West (N2W) project, a new campus for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency in north St. Louis city, has been awarded to the design-build team of McCarthy HITT with Black & Veatch Gensler JV and Akima, LLC.
The total project budget of roughly $1.7 billion includes the McCarthy HITT contract of $711.7 million, land procurement, post-construction outfitting of the building and small business set-aside construction projects. Funds are appropriated through the Pentagon’s military construction budget and Congress has authorized spending over several budget cycles.
The N2W campus will be built on a 97-acre site in the St. Louis Place neighborhood at Jefferson and Cass avenues in north St. Louis. Designed to replace the current NGA facility located south of downtown, the new development will feature a 712,000-square-foot office building, parking garages, a visitor center, a remote inspection facility and access control points.
The Kansas City District, US Army Corps of Engineers will oversee design and construction. Preliminary work beginning this spring includes various design and preconstruction activities, submittals and joint planning. Major construction work will begin in early 2020, with plans for the campus to be operational in 2025.
USACE estimates that at its peak in 2022, the project could require up to 1,300 workers per day at the site and create an anticipated 5,000 construction jobs to complete.
NGA has had a significant presence in St. Louis for seven decades and currently employs more than 3,000 local employees. The decision to build at a new location in St. Louis was announced in June 2016, and it is the largest federal investment in St. Louis history.
