Military records center will move to new home in North County in 2011
KMOX
March 24, 2010
by Brett Blume
Delayed by the recession, the project to build a new home for millions of military records in North St. Louis County is on track for completion next year.
The National Personnel Records Center, the nation's largest repository for military records, is currently located on Page Avenue west of I-170, but will be moved to a new location on Dunn Road near Highway 367.
Bryan McGraw with the National Archives and Records Administration says the new facility will allow them to better handle the 1.5 million requests for information they receive each year.
"Our research room is greatly expanded on both the record center side, which is for agency use, as well as the public one on the archival side," McGraw says. "We'll also have a multi-purpose room where we'll be able to do some public events, outreach, and K-through-12 educational programs."
The collapse of the financial markets almost derailed the project, according to Chuck Moody with the Molasky Group, which is constructing the 500,000 square foot building that will be leased to the National Archives and Records Administration, which maintains the NPRC.
He says they announced the project on September 8, 2008, just days before Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers went under, dragging much of the U.S. economy along with it.
"And the capital markets just collapsed," Moody recalls. "We were running around the country trying to to find a construction loan for $100 million, give or take a few million."
Final construction costs will top $112 million, and NARA will lease the facility at just under $20 per square foot for a total of around $9 million a year over a 20-year period.
Roughly three-quarters of the NPRC's 800 workers will make the move to the new Dunn Road facility when it opens in late 2011.
