Posted on 12/10/2006 9:20:34 AM PST by trumandogz
DALLAS — For a president, it's a place where his legacy is polished and set on display for posterity.
For the host town, a presidential library can mean an instant tourist attraction and a shot of economic vitality.
Three Texas universities are hoping to land the George W. Bush presidential library, and each is calling in its own heavy hitters and Bush backers to try to make the case.
Baylor touts its location, Southern Methodist University its personal ties and the University of Dallas its spacious site.
The president's library site-selection committee, which has been working entirely in private, could choose a winner among the three finalists as early as next month.
SMU, Laura Bush's alma mater, has been widely considered the frontrunner since the first lady told the Houston Chronicle in a 2005 interview that the school is her sentimental favorite.
The president's wife, who sits on the SMU board, also indicated the Bushes are likely to re-establish a home in the Dallas area, where they lived before moving to Austin in 1995 when he became governor.
Giving the school another edge, White House counsel Harriet Miers, another SMU graduate, is among the close friends and advisers of the president who have been said to be participants in the decision.
Attempting perhaps to level the field, Baylor and the University of Dallas have enlisted their own prominent Bush supporters to make their pitches.
Houston Astros owner Drayton McLane, a Bush friend and Baylor alumnus, was recruited to head the school's presidential library steering committee.
The University of Dallas, meanwhile, brought along Bush supporter Nancy Cain Marcus when it presented the school's proposal to the selection committee in Washington last fall.
Big financial support
SMU has had some deep-pockets help as well. Dallas oilman Ray Hunt gave the school $35 million to buy a shopping center at a corner of the campus as a potential library site. "You have all the key supporters lined up behind their pick of the three schools," said James "Skip" Rutherford, head of the William Jefferson Clinton Foundation and a key player in the building of the Clinton library in Little Rock, Ark.
"When one is picked, my sense is that they'll coalesce around whatever site President Bush decides on."
Presidential libraries are built by private donations but are run by the National Archives and Records Administration.
The bulk of private donations, which can be unlimited in size, typically comes from a president's loyal supporters, foundations and foreign governments, Rutherford said.
Bush's library, which could cost $200 million or more, is expected to include a library housing the president's papers and archives, a museum and a public policy think tank.
The institute, on the order of Stanford University's Hoover Institution, would perpetuate — some say burnish — Bush's legacy and promote his policies beyond his presidency.
Three strong proposals
Rutherford, who has visited the three sites and consulted with the committee and schools, said all three proposals have strengths — and supporters who are ready to step in to make up for their possible weaknesses. "It's truly a three-way contest," he said. "I told (Bush adviser) Karl Rove he has three good choices."
At Baylor in Waco, he said, the library would have the advantage of being "a big fish in a little pond" and the "top draw in the city."
The $165 million Clinton library drew 500,000 visitors in its first year and transformed a formerly rundown warehouse district in Little Rock by anchoring about $1 billion in new development, he said.
Waco, a city of 120,000, could be similarly transformed, Rutherford said.
Baylor and SMU didn't wait for the Bush committee's request for proposals before they began working to land the project. Both schools wrote letters of interest in hosting the library even before Bush won election in November 2000.
Tommy Lou Davis, Baylor's director of the library project, said the school is offering a 150-acre site "of naturally beautiful land on the banks of the Brazos River."
More than 30 million people a year pass by the location on Interstate 35, she said.
The school is pitching its proximity to the George H.W. Bush and Lyndon Johnson libraries in College Station and Austin, respectively, and the fact that the site is just 20 minutes from the president's ranch west of the city.
Davis said the city's civic and political establishment is lined up behind the school's bid. A local businessman, Clifton Robinson, has offered to finance the $6 million public share of a $35 million four-star hotel near the Bush complex if Baylor is selected.
New image wanted
The city's small size and its association with events such as the Branch Davidian siege and the 1953 tornado that devastated its downtown have tended to crop up in media accounts of the school's bid. And in Waco, the unflattering portrayals rankle residents.
"I wish people would give us a break," Davis said. "I don't see anyone remembering that JFK was shot in Dallas, and that was after the tornado in Waco — if we're going to start drumming up all these old things."
SMU, whose staid Georgian-style campus takes up the southeast corner of wealthy University Park, has declined to make public any details of its library bid, including where on campus the library would be.
"We have presented options to the selection committee and not specified in public where those options are," said Brad Cheves, SMU's vice president for development and external affairs. "Of course, there is speculation."
Shopping center purchased
Most of the speculation centers on the southeastern portion of the campus, where the university has been buying property and where the Hunt gift was used to purchase the 4-acre Park Cities Plaza shopping center. It is also adjacent to Central Expressway, which is the only access to the campus that does not involve Park Cities' already overburdened two-lane residential streets.
The university has been feverishly trying to remove obstacles to acquiring all the land in the densely developed area. It cleared one hurdle Friday when a federal judge ruled the university has proper title to a condominium it purchased last year.
Two condo owners who have refused to move out accused the university in civil lawsuits of using fraud and intimidation to take their property for what they said is clearly the library site.
"We think the lawsuit is without merit," Cheves said, adding that it has had no bearing on the university's proposal or a decision by the Bush site committee. "It is unrelated to the proposal process."
The university still must buy several other properties in the area. And acquisition of a strip of parkland behind the shopping center will require approval by University Park voters.
Some Dallas officials, including Mayor Laura Miller, have expressed concern that a heavily visited library at SMU will cause traffic nightmares in an already crowded area.
The university says those concerns are overstated.
"SMU has been in its location for more than 100 years, and we're accustomed to having special events and community activities," Cheves said. "This would be no different."
By contrast, the University of Dallas, which is west of the city in Irving, is offering the most spacious site.
Its hilly, wooded 300-acre site off Texas 114 has a view of downtown Dallas and easy access to the area's two commercial airports.
The city of Irving has proposed committing $50 million in hotel/motel taxes to construction of the library, which would be near Texas Stadium.
City officials expect the stadium to be torn down and the site redeveloped after the Dallas Cowboys move to Arlington in 2009.
With approximately 3,000 students, though, the Catholic liberal arts university has a much lower profile than its two bigger rivals.
Rutherford said vacationers traveling by car make up the bulk of visitors to the Clinton library and other presidential libraries across the country. The three finalists are all close to interstate highways, he pointed out.
Big crowds expected
General attendance tends to spike in the opening year, and again upon the president's death, according to National Archives figures. The Ronald Reagan hilltop library museum, which is in Simi Valley, Calif., west of Los Angeles, broke that mold when it added an Air Force One exhibit and attendance shot up to 440,000 in the 12 months ending in October, archives records show.
Regardless of which site is picked, Rutherford said he expects the Bush library will be a big draw.
"So much has happened during his presidency that people are going to want to know about," he said. "9/11, that was this generation's Pearl Harbor. There are so many major events: the Iraq war, Katrina, the tsunami. People will want to come to this library
My God they can't be seriously thinking about putting it in Waco. (Not that there is anything wrong with Waco, but it's way off the beaten path.) Why not Midland, even farther off the beaten path? The reasonable place to put it would be at SMU in Dallas, especially if the Bush's plan to re-locate there.
I don't think the Bushes plan to relocate in Dallas. Laura Bush said they are going to buy a second home located in Dallas as they have numerous friends in that city. She said their main home would be the ranch in Crawford.
The George W. Bush library should be in Laredo or El Paso.
Waco isn't so much off the beaten path. It's on I-35, the state's major north/south artery. Its airport offers connections into DFW and Houston. It's an easy drive from Dallas and Austin, and only a one hour drive from 41's library in College Station. The proposed site on the Brazos is beautiful. Insiders say SMU has the inside track, but University of Dallas may surprise everybody.
I hate that drive from Dallas south on I-35. The only good part is stopping in West at one of those Czech bakeries and loading up on treats.
Maybe Mexico will allow it to straddle the border so it can double as a point of entry.
Sorry you feel that way. I live in the Waco area and there are lots of interesting things around here if you take the time to visit them.
As soon as EVERYONE involved found out this womans situation their only concern should be to help her. Whatever it takes! Help her and make damn sure she wants for nothing.
Why? Bush has plenty of corporate and globalist buddies who'll pony up the money.
If it makes you feel any better, I hate the drive from Dallas to El Paso even worse. No Czech bakeries.
LOL, no it doesn't bother me. Sorry if I gave you that impression. I grew up in Dallas but have come to prefer the slower pace here. It's all a matter of personal preferences. I hate to deal with traffic. Waco has a rush minute that is not even as bad as Dallas during the slow part of the day. We do agree on the Czech bakeries in West -- they are outstanding.
They already have a house under construction in Highland Park. It may be their second home though.
ping
My favorite would be UTD, but I betcha it goes to Waco.
My guess is that Laura is not all that fond of Waco and therefore it will be built in Dallas.
And it used to be eating at the Turkey Shoppe Cafeteria, now lamentedly defunct.
*sniffing, but making my own smoked turkey salad sandwich right now - although it's just not the same ...*
I've already voiced my whole-hearted support for their selecting SMU, one of my two alma maters. OklaU isn't in the running *grin* - but then, neither is TheU. *double grin*
Having said that, I sure wish it had the land that is described for the site in Irving at the University of Dallas. I haven't seen it, but I sure like the idea of rolling hills, like Reagan's. (Oh, wait, I've seen pix of the Irving site, come to think of it.)
I'd be OK with Baylor, too - but 3rd of the three. Just make sure they always say "Baylor U campus" and not "Waco."
Or, maybe "Library-on-the-Brazos" without saying the town name, lol.
Oh my gosh, are you still mourning the Turkey Shoppe and their pea salad? Not fair, is it?
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