U.S. plans to move its London embassy

Washington Post

LONDON — The U.S. government plans to build a new embassy near the River Thames, moving from historic Grosvenor Square, which has been associated with the United States since shortly after the nation was born in 1776.

U.S. Ambassador Robert Tuttle on Thursday signed an agreement with Ballymore, a British real estate development firm, to acquire a five-acre development site just south of the Thames near Wandsworth.

The move, part of a years-long process that will require U.S. congressional approval and local planning permission, is part of a long-term U.S. strategy to improve security at U.S. embassies, a State Department official said.

More than 60 new embassies and other overseas facilities have been built since 2000 in a construction campaign spurred by the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, said Jonathan Blyth of the State Department’s Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations.

Renovation of the existing London embassy building, which opened in 1960, would have cost up to $600 million, taken seven years and still not have resulted in state-of-the-art security, according to Blyth.

The government spent $15 million last year on security measures that had been mandated after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States. Even after those upgrades, embassy offices are still located close to busy streets from which potential bomb attacks could be launched.

The building, a massive concrete and stone structure, is the largest U.S. embassy in Western Europe, with more than 600 rooms on nine floors and more than 750 employees. It was designed by Finnish-American architect Eero Saarinen, who also created the main terminal at Dulles International Airport in Northern Virginia.

Though many people appreciate the historical significance of the embassy building, it has drawn wide criticism as ungainly 1950s architecture dropped into a neighborhood that otherwise largely retains the ambience of the 18th and 19th centuries.