DEA WILL MOVE FROM CLAYTON TO DOWNTOWN

About 200 employees of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency will be moving
to downtown St. Louis from Clayton after a 5-story, $23 million-plus
office building is completed this year.

The precast-concrete and glass structure with underground parking is
rising at 315 South 16th Street. It is one of several new office
buildings developed by or for federal agencies in downtown in recent
years, even as the overall federal work force has been shrinking.

Among them: the $200 million Eagleton U.S. Courthouse, a $12 million
building for the Veterans Administration near 18th Street and Clark
Avenue, a $32 million building for the FBI at 2222 Market Street and a
$2.4 million building for the Social Security Administration at 701
North 16th Street.

Like most of the other buildings, the one for the DEA is being
developed privately, and the agency will lease it.

The annual rate, for more than 80,000 square feet of space, will be
$26 a square foot.

The developer is Harwood & Associates of McLean, Va., a 20-year-old
company that specializes in developing commercial buildings for the
government and private companies.

Harwood was one of 10 local and out-of-town developers who submitted
proposals to the General Services Administration in Kansas City, the
federal government's landlord in St. Louis.

Michael Brincks, the GSA director of property acquisition and realty
services, said Harwood was selected mainly because of "the quality and
price" of what it proposed.

Brincks said that while the federal work force has been shrinking, a
need still exists, in some cases, to construct new buildings.

In the case of the DEA, , its lease at a UMB Bank Building, at 7911
Forsyth Boulevard, was expiring. And the bank building, Brincks said,
"no longer meets post-Oklahoma City security requirements," including
a 100-foot setback, that agencies such as the DEA and the FBI have
nowadays.

"Sometimes," he said, "we do not have vacant space that fits an
agency's needs."

Brincks also said that in looking for a new location for the DEA, his
agency looked first to downtown St. Louis because of a GSA policy
based on a presidential executive order issued years ago. "It requires
us to give first consideration to the central business district," he
said.

Jennifer Wagner, a principal at Harwood, said the heavily secured
building would have about 140 parking spaces in a garage beneath the
building and about 60 more on a surface lot. She said it would cost
between $23 million and $25 million and would be finished in time for
the DEA to move there in August.

"This is our first and hopefully not our last project in St. Louis,"
she said.

The city's Land Clearance for Redevelopment Authority recently
approved 10 years of property-tax abatement for the project.

City officials estimate that a $14 million-a-year payroll for the DEA
employees will generate about $215,000 a year in payroll and earnings
taxes for the city.