Subject: CAS: WT: Story of Clinton library still lacks happy ending
June 19, 2000
Story of Clinton library still lacks happy ending
By Jennifer Harper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
This is the tale of a library, and it's a gothic tale indeed.
There is discord and intrigue, drama and angst. In the past
three years, the 27.7-acre site for the William Jefferson Clinton
Presidential Library in downtown Little Rock has given both both
the city and the president bouts of heartburn.
All is still not well in the land of presidential papers and
papers about presidential policies (and capers).
"We've got a local government which is secret, and a series
of catastrophes that go back to the library," says Eugene Pfeifer
III, the son of an early and prominent Arkansas family who has
stubbornly refused to part with a vacant warehouse and a bit of
land the library wants. "The city is practically broke."
Both warehouse and adjoining land are in the middle of the
library site — locally referred to as "Murky Bottoms" — and the
last of the land the city needs to complete its acquisition and
start building what city fathers insist will be a major tourist
and academic destination.
The 62-year-old developer is irked and offended by city
directors who labeled the library a "presidential park," and used
revenues from a park bond fund intended for the zoo to cover the
$16 million price of the land itself.
Mr. Pfeifer has sued the city of Little Rock, and Little
Rock in turn has filed a condemnation lawsuit to get his
property.
The riverfront site — run-down, but rife with potential —
may yet become a glorious thing, though it's already been
parodied by Clinton critics who propose such things as a
"Lewinsky Wing." One Little Rock newspaper columnist, perhaps not
entirely serious, has already collected for inclusion a thong
bikini "said to be identical to the one that attracted the
president's eye."
There will be archives and a museum, a partnership with the
University of Arkansas and a policy center. The president may
have an apartment there.
If a library in Little Rock were not enough, lately there
has been talk of the library acquiring Knollwood Lodge, a
peaceful retreat on bucolic Lake Hamilton near Hot Springs, 56
miles west of Little Rock, now owned by the estate of Raymond
Clinton, a relative of the president's.
It would serve, dryly noted the Arkansas Democrat Gazette,
as the "ex-president's Camp David."
Some speculate that this expansion could ease annoyance
among the 30 towns that also hoped to win the library —
Fayetteville, Hope and Hot Springs among them.
In the meantime, Mr. Pfeifer and the also-rans are not the
only angry parties. Little Rock housewife Nora Harris sued the
city, too, claiming the fund raising was illegal. She lost in
court, and vows to appeal until her money runs out. In what Mr.
Pfeifer describes as "the first skirmish," his case had an
initial hearing in April.
The battle with his city has given him some heartache.
"My great-grandfather Philip Pfeifer owned a general store
right there on Markham Street before the Civil War," he sighs. "I
love this beautiful town."
But he believes city fathers have erred. They are
"arrogant," he says, and he thinks the residents would have voted
to finance the library under more forthright terms.
"I think these officials served their friend, the president,
poorly," Mr. Pfeifer says. "They didn't have the confidence to
assume that they could sell the idea to the people in the proper
way."
There are other complications.
"The president is miffed at Arkansas and the Supreme Court's
recommendation he be disbarred, and with our lawsuits," notes Mr.
Pfeifer. "Some say he's looking elsewhere, which would be such a
waste."
Skip Rutherford, a friend of the president's who has been
leading the campaign to get the library for Little Rock, warned
several weeks ago that Georgetown University might be back in the
running for the library. That came in the wake of the suggestion
that the president be disbarred for lying to the courts. Mr.
Rutherford has since said maybe he had overstated the risk of the
library going elsewhere, but Little Rock friends of the president
said he was "pretty steamed" about the prospect of disbarment,
and felt embarrassed that the home folks were being mean to him.
However, the National Archives, which would operate the
library, has signed a $3.5 million lease on an old Oldsmobile
agency warehouse for storage of Mr. Clinton's papers until the
library is completed.
"I am not a Clinton hater," Mr. Pfeifer says, and asks with
no trace of irony: "How could he move his library and go against
his word? It would be a mark against his integrity."
Such rumors aside, everything is grand with the library on
the other side of the fence.
"Better than expected," says Mr. Rutherford, who first met
the president when their young daughters played softball together
years ago.
"We're moving forward. We're excited. Fund raising is great
— we expect to have $150 million-plus. The library will be a
jewel for our city."
Donors include such Hollywood glitteries as Universal
Studios Chairman Lew Wasserman; Dreamworks' David Geffen, Jeff
Katzenberg and Steven Spielberg; and designer Vera Wang.
Little Rock Mayor Jim Dailey is elated, too.
"All is well with the library," he says in an interview from
his car phone, midway between downtown Little Rock and Adams
Field, the municipal airport named for a World War I flying ace
that Clinton friends once tried to rename for first lady Hillary
Rodham Clinton.
Enthusiasm for the library has bubbled through City Hall for
the project, which boosters say will draw 300,000 yearly visitors
and generate millions in revenue. Last summer, City Hall voted to
rename Markham Street, the city's oldest thoroughfare (and once
an avenue of bordellos), "President Clinton Avenue."
The natives rebelled, much as they had over the attempt to
immortalize Mrs. Clinton at the expense of the war hero, and
within a week the proposal had been scaled back to cover only a
short section of Markham near the library site.
For his part, Mr. Clinton has promised that his library will
be a fine one, designed by James Polshek, the New York architect
who retooled the old Hayden Planetarium into a nine-story crystal
sphere.
It's his way, he says, to give back to his home state and
"make some dreams come true here in Little Rock." The library
would be "a museum, not a mausoleum."
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Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT
FROM THE DESK OF: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
*Mike Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
~~~~~~~~ <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends
Shalom, A Salaam Aleikum, and to all, A Good Day.
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