The process that the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) used to select a site for a new campus in St. Louis followed a well-documented, comprehensive and unbiased analysis of alternatives, a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report recently concluded.
U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO), who has for years led efforts to support jobs by ensuring that the NGA West headquarters remain in Missouri, applauded the GAO’s findings on Monday.
“The GAO report released (on Monday) confirms that the NGA, under the leadership of Director Robert Cardillo, completed a high-quality review process in its selection of North St. Louis as the site for the new NGA West headquarters,” Blunt said.
NGA is a defense agency that provides geospatial intelligence, intelligence operations and analysis to the military from campuses in Missouri and Virginia known as NGA West and NGA East, respectively. NGA has selected a site in St. Louis for a new NGA West campus, and leaders of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies requested a review of the process NGA used to evaluate alternative sites.
“Missouri is home to more than 3,000 dedicated, highly-skilled NGA personnel who, for more than 70 years, have provided critical intelligence and combat support to keep our country safe,” Blunt said. “The findings in the GAO report provide further momentum for moving this project forward.”
Currently, the NGA West campus is comprised of 15 facilities on 27 acres of land. Several of the buildings date back to the 1800s, and 22 acres of the campus are on the National Register of Historic Places. The NGA commissioned a series of analyses of existing facilities in Missouri from 2008 to 2012 before beginning the site selection process for a new campus, GAO reports.
NGA contracted an outside real estate firm to evaluate 186 potential sites before narrowing the field to six. After environmental impact statements, preliminary master planning by the Army Corps of Engineers and site evaluation processes, potential sites were then narrowed to four and then one, GAO reports.
GAO found that “certain sub-factors of criteria were adjusted to provide further layers of analysis,” and the most important factors in the site selection were always seen as mission and security. NGA selected a site in St. Louis for the new campus, and construction estimated to cost about $945 million is slated to begin in 2019.