Long-Delayed Opening for U.S. Building Seen This Year : Government: When some tenants changed their minds, office space in the federal facility had to be redrawn, delaying contracts. Now there is hope for a 1991 debut.

LONG BEACH — Since ground was broken for a new federal building in downtown Long Beach in 1987, the towering World Trade Center next door has become a fixture of the local skyline, the 24-story Landmark Square office building down the road has opened and the Blue Line trolley has started humming around town. But the federal building still isn’t finished.

A chain-link fence surrounds the eight-story, pink-skinned structure on Ocean Boulevard, and overgrown grass fills its landscaping beds. Naked ceiling ducts glisten through the windows.

“This one definitely has taken some time,” conceded Mary Filippini of the federal General Services Administration, which oversees such projects.

First proposed in 1981 by U.S. Rep. Glenn M. Anderson (D-San Pedro), the building was started in September of 1987 and was to be occupied by January, 1990.

The latest move-in date is now the summer and fall of this year.

The exterior of the $49-million building was finished last August, but it was months before work began on the interior. The problem, Filippini said, was that some of the tenant agencies changed their minds about how much space they needed. Office plans had to be redrawn, delaying the awarding of contracts to complete the work.

Although the federal building is hardly on the cutting edge of architecture, federal officials have touted it as an improvement over the basic boxes of 1960s government construction. The 242,000-square-foot building will have high-tech computer and telecommunications features and will house about 900 workers.

Anderson, the building’s chief congressional proponent, will be among the first to move in this summer. Other tenants will include the U.S. Coast Guard, the Internal Revenue Service, the Social Security Administration, the FBI, the Department of Agriculture, federal probation offices and the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Most of those agencies are leasing private office space at different locations in Long Beach or the South Bay. Several of the new building’s tenants will be moving from offices just across the street in the Union Bank building.

During debate over the project, Anderson argued that by bringing together all the agencies in one, federally owned building, the government would save about $70 million in rent over three decades. Former Republican Congressman Daniel E. Lungren, who also represented the area, condemned the project as unnecessary.

Filippini could not say how much the government has paid in rent to continue housing the federal agencies in other buildings while construction on the downtown project has dragged on. The new building, she added, is already paid for.