Trying to build GDAL's ECW plugin in 64 bit Linux

I’m trying to build the GDAL’s ECW plugin in Linux. I’m using the latest version of the SDK from Intergraph’s site (5.0). It fails because it tries to compile against the 32 bit version of the library and not the 64. Here’s the error message where the process dies:

/usr/bin/ld: skipping incompatible  
/usr/local/ecwjp2_sdk/lib/x86/release/libNCSEcw.so when searching for -lNCSEcw
/usr/bin/ld: skipping incompatible    
/usr/local/ecwjp2_sdk/lib/x86/release/libNCSEcw.a when searching for -lNCSEcw
/usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lNCSEcw

I have pointed ldconfig to look in /usr/local/ecwjp2_sdk/lib/x64/release, but that seems to be ignored. Is there any way to force it to look in the 64 bit version’s directory, or can I get away with changing the symlinks for the 32 bit version and have them point to the 64′s instead?