HELP: la files not being found

[mike <mike redtux demon co uk>]

I am trying to get gnome2 to compile into /usr/local/gnome 
however I am getting 

grep /usr/lib/libgconf-2.la: no such file or directory

which is right because it is in /usr/local/gnome/lib
I have LDFLAGS=-I/usr/local/gnome/lib

How do I get it to actually see la files in my prefix