ST. LOUIS • Every morning, workers from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency buy 40 pretzels from Gus Koebbe’s shop on Lemp Avenue. They then drive down Arsenal Street, roll past the agency’s stone walls and barbed wire, flash their cards through security and walk the warm dough into their cafeteria.
Two weeks ago, the agency held an employee appreciation day and sent two workers to Koebbe’s shop, Gus’ Pretzels, to buy 3,500 of the treats, plus 2,500 cups of honey mustard and cheese sauce.
And if anyone needs an example of the impact of the 3,100-worker federal employer, that, area business owners say, is a pretty good one.
Employees at NGA, as the agency is called, go to Big Daddy’s Bar & Grill in Soulard for lunch. Night-shift workers stop at Benton Park Café for breakfast burritos. Security guards visit Joel’s Shell Food Mart, every day, for gas, coffee and cigars.
People are also reading…
“They’re fabulously nice,†said Benton Park Café bartender Laura “Dazz†Alter. “We’ll be sad to see them go.â€
Some have questioned whether a secretive spy agency can have any impact on its surrounding neighborhoods. Business owners and managers around the nation’s three current NGA facilities, however, say that the federal workers — while a bit closed-lipped — make for wonderful and regular customers.
Civic officials, meanwhile, tout the impact of the agency on area development and business.
“That many employees, with technical jobs and good pay, they’re going to buy lunches and gasoline and all sorts of things,†said Gerald Gordon, president and chief executive of the Economic Development Authority in Fairfax County, which houses the NGA’s large eastern headquarters.
The NGA’s western headquarters, wedged between the riverfront and the Anheuser-Busch brewery here, is closing after years of preparation. The agency’s director, Robert Cardillo, that a 100-acre site in north ºüÀêÊÓƵ is for the NGA’s new location. In doing so, he skipped over 182 acres among the cornfields of southwestern Illinois, near Scott Air Force Base.
Officials on both sides of the Mississippi River fought vehemently for the employment center. Many have said both sides made compelling arguments.
Multiple Illinois officials did not return calls seeking comment for this story. Several said last week that they intend to keep fighting for Scott and the Illinois site.
City leaders believe ºüÀêÊÓƵ won in part because officials pitched the NGA as a cornerstone of urban redevelopment in a swath of city only pockmarked by life.
Cardillo said as much on Thursday evening. The future of the agency, he wrote, rests on the next generation — and today’s millennials want to be in bustling cities, close to their workplace.
“We face tough competition†for employees, he said, “and offering an environment that appeals to these future generations is critical to our success.â€
‘FIRST MONEY IN’
The city has long been planning for just such growth. But private projects in that area, such as Paul McKee’s beleaguered NorthSide Redevelopment, have rarely even broken ground.
“Nobody wants to be the first money in,†said Jeff Rainford, Mayor Francis Slay’s former chief of staff, who worked on the project for two years before leaving last year. As a secured facility, NGA isn’t a perfect investment, he said. But it will jump-start redevelopment.
It’s like a drop of ink in a glass of water, said Otis Williams, executive director of the city’s development arm. The ink swirls, dips and eventually spreads throughout the glass.
A $1.7 billion facility — including $1 billion in construction — will overhaul the area’s landscape, he said.
Williams has stacks of maps, drawings and fact sheets that outline the city’s hopes:
Leaders intend to spend more than $15 million on median, streetscape and bicycle facility improvements on Cass, ºüÀêÊÓƵ and Jefferson avenues, probably after the NGA facility is built.
They say they have attracted interest from the AFL-CIO’s Housing Investment Trust in building a $52 million, 250-unit infill housing revitalization project just east of the site.
They hope a north-south MetroLink expansion could run tracks from the city center, along Jefferson Avenue, and up to the NGA site.
And, at the overgrown site of the demolished Pruitt-Igoe public housing towers, they envision 20 blocks of brand-new retail, restaurants, office and service businesses, directly across the street from the spy facility — all projects that would require significant private investment.
The city has months of work ahead of it before turning over the site to the NGA in 2017, Williams said.
The agency will formally confirm its choice by June 1, he said. City and NGA officials will begin discussing terms of the land transfer around August or September. And the city will have about a year to buy homes, move residents, demolish buildings, clear land, reroute utilities and clean contaminated ground.
It will , relocate residents and, in at least one case, move a historic home, Williams said. The city will pay almost $10 million to pull out and reroute all electric lines, gas pipes and other utilities, plus $36 million, funded through state Brownfield tax credits, to clean the ground.
NGA employees pay about $2.4 million a year in city earnings taxes. Of that, city officials have set aside $1.5 million annually to repay bonds for site expenses, leaving $900,000 a year — and growing, as the agency adds workers and workers get raises — for city coffers.
The state will add almost $100 million more in tax-increment financing for site preparation.
It’s worth it, Williams said. “This project,†he said, “could truly be catalytic to the North Side.â€
SPINOFF DEVELOPMENT
The NGA runs three campuses, one on Fort Belvoir in Virginia and two in ºüÀêÊÓƵ.
Mary Holden, the community development director for Arnold, said the NGA’s smallest site, just west of Highway 55 off Vogel Road, has been an important neighbor.
The agency built the facility, which is unaffected by the ºüÀêÊÓƵ move, in the mid-1990s, she said. Before long, housing tracts came in around it. A strip mall developed across the road, with an NGA-frequented Mexican restaurant, plus a Target and Home Depot, among other stores.
There are quirks to a spy facility. When it needed building permits more recently, leaders didn’t want to turn them in to the city, so the city sent inspectors to them. And the facility as a whole doesn’t exactly reach out to the public. “They keep a very low profile,†Holden said.
The agency doesn’t interact with the community as would more-public companies, agreed Gordon, the Fairfax County economic development chief.
But the 8,500-employee NGA office in Fairfax County has an impact, he said. “It elevates the education level, the income levels of that area of the county, generates added tax revenue from contractors and all contributes to greater patronization of retail space around it,†he said.
The NGA moved its national headquarters to the 51,000-worker Fort Belvoir military base in 2011. And with its arrival came contractors, Gordon said.
He figures new private companies have added at least a million feet of office space — several buildings’ worth — since the NGA arrived.
Moreover, Gordon said, he expects the agency to keep growing.
There are costs, he warned. Federal property isn’t on tax rolls, but the children from all those employees still use public schools. And area roadways have clogged some, no question.
But, with an educated workforce and good public schools, Fairfax County has become a coveted location, he said.
That could — eventually — happen in north ºüÀêÊÓƵ, too, said Sarah Coffin, an associate professor of urban planning at ºüÀêÊÓƵ University.
The federal government is about to plant its flag, she said. That sends a message to developers.
“While it might not happen overnight, 10 years after it opens, I am sure there will be spinoff development,†she said.
It’s very important, she added, for the city to guide that growth and hold on to its historic feel.
Guys like Joel Platke, owner of the Shell station on Arsenal by Anheuser-Busch, are worried about the loss of their regular patrons. “This is going to affect my business, no doubt,†he said. “It’s going to hurt the South Side.â€
But the move, said ºüÀêÊÓƵ Regional Chamber President and Chief Executive Joe Reagan, should only end up as a positive for the region.
“The federal government has chosen to invest billions of dollars in this region and this economy,†Reagan said. “This investment is going to create jobs throughout the entire region.â€
There’s only one way to lose, he said — if St. Clair County can’t use the momentum it created over the past few years to draw new jobs, new companies, to its site in the cornfields.
“Nobody can predict at this moment what the next opportunity will be,†he said. “But there will be a next opportunity. There will be.â€
