( KTRS ) A two-state fight for a federal spy agency’s new regional headquarters and more than 3,000 high-tech jobs has gained increased urgency in St. Louis after the failed bid to build a $1 billion riverfront stadium.

St. Louis leaders had envisioned a new Rams stadium and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency complex as anchors for the city’s impoverished north side. Those urban renewal hopes now rest solely on a selection the federal government expects to announce as soon as March.

St. Louis is competing with adjacent St. Clair County in Illinois, which has offered nearly 400 acres of donated land near Scott Air Force Base, near Belleville, IL.