Turned away by Stanford University, Reagan library found hilltop home

Saturday, June 12th 2004, 10:28 am

By: News On 6

LOS ANGELES (AP) _ The Spanish Mission-style complex where Ronald Reagan was laid to rest provides a dramatic view of rolling horse country and the Pacific that the 40th president so loved in life.

The site, however, wasn't the first choice for Reagan's presidential library.

Planners working on the project in the 1980s wanted to build it at Stanford University in Palo Alto, where its Hoover Institution holds Reagan's papers from his time as governor. But they made an embarrassing retreat after students, faculty and even nearby homeowners complained about everything from politics to potential traffic.

The library foundation then turned to Southern California, where it had dozens of offers of land. When the first couple finally saw the property on the grassy hilltop with a view in Simi Valley, it was love at first site.

Gerald Blakeley, a Boston developer and Republican fund-raiser, was part of a partnership that donated 100 acres for the library. He recalled the Reagans' excitement about the spot, which provided one of the last unbroken vistas in eastern Ventura County.

``They just fell in love with it,'' Blakeley said in a telephone interview. The property, stippled with oaks and rock formations, didn't have a road much less running water at the time, but the Reagans ``had imagination,'' he said.

The Reagan Presidential Library and Museum, built with private funds at a cost estimated between $45 million and $60 million, is the largest of the nation's 10 presidential libraries. Sprawling over 150,000 square feet, it houses nearly 55 million pages of government records, more than 1.5 million photographs and 769,500 feet of motion picture film.

Its annual budget relies on federal and private dollars. In the fiscal year that ended in September, the federal government spent $3.8 million to run the Reagan library, which was fourth on the list of popularity, behind libraries devoted to Presidents Johnson, Kennedy and George H.W. Bush.

When Reagan broke ground for the library in 1988, he predicted future generations would come there to study the conservative shift in politics he ushered in.

``The journey has not been just my own,'' Reagan said at the time. ``It seems I have been guided by a force much larger than myself, a force made up of ideas and beliefs about what this country is and what it could be.''