Plans Unveiled for Nixon Library in Yorba Linda

Plans for the $25-million Richard M. Nixon Presidential Library in Yorba Linda were revealed this week after the City Council voted Tuesday to declare the 6-acre site a historical site and approved an environmental impact report for the facility.

The complex, to be built with private funds, will consist of sandstone tile buildings arranged in a horseshoe around a reflecting pool. Picture windows will face the pool, and a terraced lawn will lead down to the wood-frame house where Nixon was born 75 years ago. Trellised gardens will surround the library grounds.

The architectural plans, by the Newport Beach offices of Langdon Wilson Mumper, created about as much stir in Yorba Linda as the decision last November to build the library on the former President’s family homestead.

“No one has shown up in the public meetings to oppose it,” said city Planning Director Phillip Paxton. “It seems to me the most popular project we have had.”

The two-level complex, with red tile roofs and 275 parking spaces, will include a museum as well as offices, a theater, an exhibit room and climate-controlled document storage rooms.

Final approval for the project is expected when the city Planning Commission meets June 29 to review and vote on the architectural plans. Paxton said he foresees no obstacles to the project.

Ground-breaking ceremonies are scheduled for November. Nixon is expected to attend.

The presidential library will contain no official papers from Nixon’s six years as President. Instead, it will house his vice presidential papers, personal papers since he has left office, book manuscripts and White House diaries.

After the Watergate scandal that forced Nixon’s resignation when he was named as an unindicted co-conspirator on criminal charges, Congress passed an act that gives custody to 44 million pages of his official papers and 4,000 hours of tape recordings to the National Archives and requires that they remain in Washington while classified information is removed.