Little Trickle-Down Effect From Reagan Library : Tourism: Attendance is strong, but the facility has not produced a windfall for Simi Valley businesses.

Joanne Meister guides 25 squealing third-graders past a slab of the Berlin Wall, a collection of Ronald Reagan’s movie posters and a video of John W. Hinckley Jr.’s assassination attempt.

Finally, the group arrives at a replica of the Oval Office as it looked under President Reagan.

“The Jelly Bellies are right there on that side table,” says Meister, a volunteer docent at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, pointing to the former actor’s favorite White House snack.

Halfway through its first year, the library complex--which includes a museum, research center and storage space for Reagan’s presidential papers and gifts on a hill overlooking this Ventura County suburb--has settled into a comfortable routine.

On the day the third-graders visited, the turnout was the usual mix of schoolchildren and senior citizens. In the gift shop, several visitors browsed among Ronald Reagan T-shirts, baseball hats, playing cards, postcards, coffee mugs, beach towels and “Chief Chef” aprons.

In the hall of presidential signatures, another volunteer, Darrell Hufford, spoke in a somber tone. “Did you know that we have five presidents who are not buried on American soil?” he asked.

As several visitors stared in astonishment, Hufford smiled and hit his punch line: “Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan and Bush.”

Since the $57-million library opened in November, research activity has been slow. Also, the economic spinoffs some Simi Valley business people banked on have not materialized. But interest among Reagan fans and the curious has been high.

By the end of April, said library Director Ralph C. Bledsoe, 207,000 people had visited, the biggest crowd at any of the nation’s nine official presidential libraries.

“The first six months have been a fantastic experience,” said Bledsoe, who predicted that attendance will settle at about 20,000 monthly visitors as the novelty wears off.

Simi Valley, a Republican enclave snug against the Santa Susanna Mountains west of the San Fernando Valley, came to value the shrine to Reagan’s presidency in a new way in recent weeks.

As urban unrest spread across the country, local leaders pleaded with the media to call Simi Valley the home of the Reagan Library--not the site of the trial in the beating of Rodney G. King.

But business leaders who expected that the library would be a gold mine, drawing thousands of tourists and their vacation dollars to town, have not seen their hopes realized. Few visitors to the library linger long in Simi Valley.

“Our close proximity to the Greater Los Angeles area makes it an easy day trip for people,” said Nancy Bender, executive director of the Simi Valley Chamber of Commerce. “It’s primarily benefited our restaurants.”

Victor Kreis, owner of Jack’s Restaurant in Simi Valley, said he picked his Madera Road location shortly after he learned that the library would be built nearby. The gamble has paid off. Business at Jack’s is up 20% over last year, Kreis said.

“We’ve had people all the way from Orange County and San Bernardino,” he said. “They wouldn’t have been here otherwise in a million years. We have about 10 tour bus companies that use us.”

One of those is Torrance-based Main Street Tours, which puts together day tours for senior citizens. “Last year one of our big sellers was the Nixon library,” said reservations manager Laura Stuckey. “So this year we put together a trip involving the Reagan library.”

For about $26, seniors get a bus trip to and from the library, a tour and lunch at Jack’s. The firm has run about 30 such tours, each carrying 40 or more people, and it has 15 more tours scheduled.

“This year it’s one of our most requested trips,” Stuckey said. “What the repeat business is going to be, I can’t tell you. . . . (The problem is) there’s not a whole lot out there in Simi Valley to take them to, except for the library.”

Hoping to persuade more visitors to stay the night, hotel managers in Simi Valley and nearby Thousand Oaks beefed up their marketing efforts. Some are proposing tours that would link the Reagan library with trips to Universal Studios, the Getty Museum or perhaps Ventura County beaches.

“The room-nights we anticipated haven’t materialized,” said Marge Moore, general manager of the Travelodge of Simi Valley.

Still, Moore does not regret having the library. “It’s a historical place, and I’m very patriotic,” she said. “I think it’s very good for the city.”

The library, operated by the National Archives and Records Administration, houses about 50 million pages of documents from Reagan’s White House years. Not surprisingly, the Reagan museum focuses mainly on the man’s achievements.

The Iran-Contra scandal gets scant mention in one exhibit. Bledsoe said he refers anyone who wants to know more about the scandal to the library’s research room.

A few visitors interviewed on a recent afternoon had no complaints. “I’m very impressed,” said John Balich, 40, a firefighter who lives in Simi Valley. “I just think he was a great leader. I think his policies were successful. Some of the difficulties we’re having now came from abandoning those policies.”

Gene Carman, a retiree from Kankakee, Ill., who “never did vote for him,” enjoyed the museum nonetheless. “It’s very nice--a lot of history here and a lot of good entertainment,” Carman said.

About 6.3 million pages from the Reagan White House years are open to review, most of them unsolicited letters to the President. Another 432,000 pages will be made public at the end of May.

Attention from scholars and other researchers has been slight.

“Historically, there’s not much interest,” said Sheldon Kamieniecki, vice chairman of the political science department at USC. “We just had eight years of Reagan. Some people may think it’s too new to look at.”

There may be another reason for the lack of requests to study the Reagan material, he said. “Everybody’s bashing him, so there’s nothing new in doing that. I think scholars tend to gravitate to presidencies that are more interesting.”