The General Services Administration is going to lease the building for national archival storage, mostly for keeping permanent documents regarding military and government employees. The building will have 2.3 million cubic feet of storage space, with the ability to stack records 29 boxes high, says Bryan McGraw with the National Archives.

The plan for the new building started in 2007, when GSA officials proposed the construction of two buildings, for a total of 900,000 square feet, in the St. Louis area. The new facilities were to replace two million square feet of storage where the records are now kept, at the Federal Records Center at 9700 Page Ave. and the National Archives building at 111 Winnebago St.

However, the decision was made to instead shrink the St. Louis footprint to the Dunn Road property plan, and also construct the 400,000-square-foot National Personnel Records Annex building in Valmeyer, IL, a few miles south of St. Louis. The annex was completed in fall 2008. "Instead of breaking up the records by military vs. civilian, we decided to keep the temporary records in Illinois. They're called temporary because we eventually dispose of about 97% of the millions of records." The Dunn Road facility, however, will house the permanent paper records that will never be destroyed," McGraw tells GlobeSt.com.

He says he's not sure what will happen to the Page Avenue and Winnebago Street properties. "I suspect with the one-million-square-footPage property, because of its age from the early 1950s, just the amount of abatement and retrofit needed would necessitate it being razed," McGraw says. However, the Page property also includes a 500,000-square-foot National Guard building that is being vacated in December by troops moving to Fort Knox, KY. "That's an office building, there might be reuse there," McGraw says. The Winnebago property, with one million square feet, was built in 1963. Other government agencies and non-profits will get first crack at the 2.5 million vacated square feet, according to GSA rules.