OKLAHOMA CITY ? The agency overseeing construction of Oklahoma City’s new federal building is having no trouble finding tenants.

“We’ve got more people that want to be in there than we have space,” said Leonard Murphy, spokesman for the General Services Administration.

The $31.5 million building will replace the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, which was destroyed in the April 19, 1995, bombing that killed 168 people.

The new building, which is 75 percent complete, is scheduled to open in October one block from the Oklahoma City National Memorial.

Despite its proximity to the memorial, several federal agencies have pledged to move in, Murphy said. The building’s “anchor” tenants will be Housing and Urban Development, the U.S. Military Enlistment Processing Station and the Office of Hearings and Appeals of the Social Security Administration.

Other prospective tenants include the Office of Veterans Affairs, the Small Business Administration, the Food and Drug Administration and the General Services Administration, Leonard said.

Designers have worked with HUD to make sure employees who survived the 1995 attack are as comfortable as possible. Some HUD employees have said working so close to the site of the bombing will be too traumatic.

Cathy Coulter, a 16-year veteran of the agency, has lobbied to avoid a move into the new building.

“I don’t want to go at all,” she said. “It’s the location. It’s right where all my friends died.”

Project officials have touted the building as the safest downtown and say it complies with safety standards implemented after the Murrah bombing, the World Trade Center bombing of 1993 and the bombing of U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998.

The complex is set 50 feet from adjacent roadways and is surrounded by trees and concrete plugs that prevent vehicles from getting close. In addition, the glass has been treated to minimize injuries in the event of an explosion.

Coulter said the safety features won’t do much to ease her apprehension, but said HUD employees have tried to focus on the need to go back to “show terrorism it’s not going to win.”

She also said she wants to make sure bomber Timothy McVeigh doesn’t “win.”

“I’m not going to let this man destroy my life,” she said. “I’m frightened, I’m not going to lie to you. But I’m not going to let him win.”