USC Scouted as Possible Presidential Library Site

Discussions have been held about moving the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library to USC or to one of several other Southern California educational institutions, according to a trustee of the foundation charged with building the library.

“We’re evaluating sites in Southern California; we’re coming your way,” said Martin C. Anderson, secretary of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation, after the announcement last week that the foundation’s trustees had decided to abandon plans to build the library in the foothills overlooking the Stanford University campus in Palo Alto.

Anderson, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford and a former official of both the Reagan and Nixon administrations, said no final decision has been made on a new location for the library and an affiliated public affairs center.

‘Expressed Great Interest’

“A lot of trustees and other people have been talking informally” with representatives of several colleges and universities, he said. “Several people have expressed great interest in having the library and policy center. I don’t think there’s going to be any shortage of sites.”

USC Provost Cornelius J. Pings said USC President James H. Zumberge “did have several informal inquiries” in recent weeks about possible interest in the Reagan library from sources close to the White House.

“Our response was, ‘Of course, we would always be interested in scholarly acquisitions such as presidential papers,’ ” Pings said, but neither he nor Zumberge took the matter seriously because they thought the deal with Stanford was closed.

When they learned that the library will not be built at Stanford, Pings said, USC administrators began an “internal review” to see if USC is in a position to make a formal proposal to the Reagan Presidential Foundation.

But he emphasized that “there’s been absolutely no formal commitment” on the part of either USC or the foundation trustees.

Reports circulated that UCLA and Pepperdine University were also being considered.

But UCLA Chancellor Charles E. Young sent word through a campus spokeswoman that “it is not true that there has been any proposal for it (the library) to come to UCLA.”

Executive Vice Chancellor William Schaefer said there was no room on the crowded UCLA campus for the library and policy center and the increased traffic they would generate.

Officials of the 820-acre Pepperdine University campus, overlooking the Pacific Ocean in Malibu, were not available for comment.

Years of Negotiations

Anderson said the decision to abandon the Stanford site after several years of negotiations and planning was made by the Reagan Foundation’s nine trustees at a meeting in Washington last Thursday.

In addition to Anderson, the trustees include Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III; William P. Clark, Reagan’s former national security adviser; Secretary of Energy John S. Herrington; former Atty. Gen. William French Smith; W. Glenn Campbell, director of the Hoover Institution; Mary Jane Wick; Walter Annenberg, and Lew R. Wasserman, chairman of the board of MCA Inc.

In a formal statement, the trustees said the move was made because it was not possible to accommodate both the library and the policy center on the 20-acre site made available by the Stanford Board of Trustees.

The Stanford trustees rejected the policy center because they were unwilling to have it run by the Hoover Institution, a library and conservative “think tank” on the Stanford campus.

Asked if mounting opposition from Stanford faculty members and property owners in the area affected the decision of the Reagan Foundation trustees, Anderson said, “we agreed we wouldn’t discuss the reasons” beyond the formal statement.

However, he noted, “a number of faculty members raised a number of concerns.”

Anderson declined to say if President Reagan had approved the trustees’ decision but noted, “From the President’s point of view it would be desirable to have the library and the policy center in the same location.”

In Washington, White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said, “The President is comfortable with the decision.”

Meanwhile, on the Stanford campus some library opponents were happy, but others worried that the long argument about the library might cost the university some of its conservative support.

‘Elation,’ ‘Jubilation’

“A lot of people at Stanford feel elation, if not jubilation,” said John F. Manley, professor of political science and a leading library opponent

“I’m elated,” said another critic, Ronald Rebholz, professor of English. “It’s one of the few political victories of my career.”

Christy Holloway, one of the organizers of neighborhood opposition to the library, said: “I’m greatly relieved. Perhaps the climate for this facility will be more positive in Southern California. . . .”

But William M. Chace, vice provost for academic planning, said, “Many people are rightfully worried” about the possible loss of financial support at Stanford.

Several observers said opposition to the library increased in recent months because of concern about the effects the buildings would have on an especially beautiful part of the Stanford campus, not because of liberal objections to the presumably conservative nature of the library’s programs.

“It finally sunk in on people exactly what that site was and what was proposed to go on it,” said Albert H. Hastorf, former provost and one of 12 former Faculty Senate chairmen who signed a statement asking the university trustees to reduce the library’s size or move it to another location.

“Why, they were planning to build a road right through the center of the volleyball court” at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, of which Hastorf is a trustee.

‘Too Big for the Site’

“The structure was too big for the site,” said H. Craig Heller, professor of biological sciences and another signer of the “letter of 12.” “The balance between scholarly use and tourist use was not appropriate.”

Heller said plans for the complex were increased from 85,000 to more than 140,000 square feet and that an estimated 200,000 to 400,000 tourists would have visited the location annually.

Some believe that the Reagan Foundation trustees, faced with a lengthy environmental fight against aroused faculty members and property owners, decided to walk away from the Stanford location and start again.

“A project like this can be delayed for a very long time by people who are sufficiently determined,” one professor said. “I suspect the delays just got to the Reagan people.”