Scouting a New Home For Homeland Security

"It's going to be a very visible thing on our skyline, and we're going to be living with whatever it is for a very long time," Luebke said.

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The plan will also be reviewed Nov. 1 by the National Capital Planning Commission, which has veto authority over it. The commission is composed of representatives from the Bush administration, Congress, the office of Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) and the D.C. Council.

The GSA said it will use feedback from the two sessions to revise the plan, and a final version will be delivered in January. Officials said they hope the proposal will get the go-ahead from the planning commission by April. At that point, architectural designs would be drawn up for the first phase of construction, a headquarters for the Coast Guard, McGill said.

Plans call for the site to accommodate Homeland Security headquarters personnel, including the department's secretary, and employees of divisions including the Transportation Security Administration, Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

The site would also have a barber shop, cafeteria, child-care center and gym. The draft master plan envisions building two entrances off I-295 to handle traffic to the site, and shuttle buses would run from the Metro.

President Bush's budget allots $318 million to begin construction in 2008, but Congress has not approved the expense.

Historic preservationists said they are not satisfied with either design. A coalition of groups has drawn up a study concluding that there should be no more than 2.5 million square feet of development at the site. The GSA is seeking almost twice that amount in office space, in addition to more than 5,000 parking spaces.

"I would guess that there will be some fairly strong efforts to try and have these two proposals changed," said John Clark of the D.C. Preservation League, one of many groups that have offered input in the past two years.

The preservationists' worries are shared by D.C. government officials.

"At some level, we're happy this beautiful, historic campus will receive the resources it needs," said Harriet Tregoning, the city's planning director. But, she said, "we continue to have concerns about the plans, mostly the intensity of the development."

D.C. officials and residents are also worried that the high-security facility would be largely self-contained and wouldn't bring economic development to the area.

Residents "are thinking it's just going to be another isolated area, behind the walls," said Sandra Seegars, a community activist and longtime resident of Congress Heights, a neighborhood next to the campus.

Federal officials acknowledged that security is one of the attractions of St. Elizabeths: Offices can be built at least 100 feet from Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue SE and other streets, offering protection from car bombs and other dangers.

But they said the Homeland Security compound would offer benefits, including opportunities for local businesses to bid on the estimated $3 billion in construction work. And they said government contractors could cluster near the site, as they have around Navy facilities in the city.

In addition, "there's the symbolism -- a Cabinet-level agency is going to be headquartered in this area. Suddenly, this area has a certain cachet," McGill said.

St. Elizabeths is the only federal site in Washington that can accommodate Homeland Security, whose local employees are scattered among 60 offices, McGill said. If the agency can't move to the St. Elizabeths spot, it will probably have to move outside the city.

McGill said Homeland Security doesn't want to build a smaller headquarters, because it needs many employees at the site in the event of a national emergency. And the four-year-old agency wants to "achieve a critical mass of people to establish a common culture," he said.