FBI drops plan for new complex in Westwood

In a significant victory for Westside activists, the FBI revealed late Thursday that it has decided not to build a new Los Angeles headquarters at the Federal Building site on Wilshire Boulevard.

“In response to community concerns, the FBI has requested that the General Services Administration ... search for alternative sites for the FBI’s Los Angeles field office,” the agency said in a brief statement. “The FBI has requested that the GSA not expand the Wilshire Boulevard site” for its office.

Community leaders and elected officials gave much of the credit for the FBI’s change of heart to Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who had been urging the FBI and GSA to pursue locations other than the parcel that lies in a high-traffic area next to the San Diego Freeway.

Last week, Feinstein sent a letter to the GSA and FBI asking them to drop the project and explore alternatives.

“This is good news,” Feinstein said in a statement released late Thursday. “There was an insurmountable amount of neighborhood opposition in a corridor of major traffic congestion.” She added that she would be “very happy to help the FBI find a new location.”

Councilman Jack Weiss, who represents the area, agreed. “There’s no question that when the FBI gets a new headquarters in Los Angeles, that will also be a great victory for L.A.,” he said. “We’ll locate that building, I hope, in a more central location that makes more sense in terms of law enforcement, access to the rest of government and traffic.”

Downtown Los Angeles, Weiss added, best meets that description, but he said he would be open to other suggestions.

Neighborhood opposition erupted three years ago when federal officials revealed plans for a massive FBI structure that would be built next to the existing Federal Building.

Community leaders and their elected representatives complained that the project would make the area a bull’s-eye for terrorists and push more cars into an already congested area.

In addition to Feinstein and Weiss, Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles) and Councilman Bill Rosendahl had backed the community’s effort. Two weeks ago, Weiss and Rosendahl announced that the city would join any lawsuit filed by community opponents to challenge the project.

This month, the GSA, which is responsible for managing such government construction projects, said it was close to a decision to raze the 17-story Federal Building and replace it with two towers that would become the Los Angeles headquarters for the FBI.

At the time, the GSA said the Westwood site, on Veteran Avenue, was “actually the best” of 35 sites the agency had studied.

The FBI has asked that the GSA expand its “delineated area” and search for other possible sites.

“We’re thrilled,” said Laura Lake, a founder of the Coalition for Veterans’ Land, an organization of property owners, veterans and businesses that had mounted a high-profile campaign against the project.

But she added that “we’re not done with the GSA. We still have the issue ... of whose land this is.”

The coalition recently announced that after an exhaustive search of records, it had concluded that the Federal Building site was still part of the West Los Angeles Veterans Affairs campus and thus should be used for veterans services.

Lake said the FBI’s decision showed “the importance of unity and the power of the coalition that we’ve put together.”

Feinstein has also pushed the government to prepare a master plan for the federal properties in the area, including the West Los Angeles Veterans Affairs campus, the Federal Building and an Army Reserve site just south of Wilshire.

“We intend to keep [the coalition] going,” Lake said, “until we return the land to veterans services and get a master plan. We’re not done.”

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martha.groves@latimes.com