Low-Key Ceremony Celebrates Reagan Library’s 1st Birthday : Simi Valley: The event lacks the pomp of the archive’s year-ago opening. Director Ralph C. Bledsoe thanks the community.

In the spot where five U. S. Presidents stood a year ago, two Ventura County supervisors and a Simi Valley Boy Scout troop gathered Wednesday to quietly commemorate the first birthday of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.

“Today I want to offer a special thanks to our local community,” library Director Ralph C. Bledsoe told the county officials and a small group of visitors. “The local people in the communities around the library and in the county have just been magnificent to us.”

Bledsoe said the five-day birthday celebration--neither Reagan nor wife Nancy plan to attend--is intended as a low-key way to thank the locals by de-emphasizing the pomp and circumstance that dominated a year ago.

County residents will be given free admission through Sunday, when the library will hold an open house offering patrons a rare chance to see the stacks of documents stored underground and other objects not routinely on display.

More than 300,000 people strolled through the library’s historic exhibits in its first year, Bledsoe said later during an interview in his office.

Some were familiar with the workings of a presidential library, but many were not. “A lot of people were asking early on, ‘Where can I get my library card? How can I check out books?’ ” Bledsoe said. “They didn’t know what it was.”

Built on 100 acres of scenic hillside overlooking Simi Valley and Thousand Oaks, the 153,000-square-foot library is a repository for artifacts of Reagan’s eight years in office.

“I think it’s been a successful year in terms of my expectations,” Bledsoe said. “I wanted to spend the first year making sure we could operate the facility in a way that our visitors enjoyed.”

Changes made to further that goal in the first year included better direction signs, the opening of a snack area with vending machines, the construction of a picnic area with benches and tables and the addition of an informational sign next to a slab of the Berlin Wall.

“We didn’t have a sign,” Bledsoe said. “We just thought people would recognize it and know what it is.”

And in an attempt to make people more familiar with the research facilities available at the library, archivists now offer orientation tours on Saturdays and Sundays to explain how to use some of the 50 million pages of documents stored in the basement.

The library has handled about 2,500 requests for information, but only about 100 researchers have used the facility since it opened.

“Researchers are going to come when they come,” Bledsoe said. “You cannot go out and pull in researchers. It’s normal for there to be a delay in researchers coming to a presidential library right after the President has left office.”

The delay, Bledsoe said, is caused by the public’s familiarity with a President who recently served and the knowledge that many documents are not yet available. Of the 50 million pages, about 6.7 million are now available. Archivists continue to evaluate the remaining documents for release.

Many documents open for public review are unsolicited personal letters to Reagan.

Asked about the impact the library is making on Simi Valley, Bledsoe said, “Economically, I don’t know. . . . In terms of an attraction to the county, I think it is a unique historic attraction that I hope the county’s proud of.”

One economic market that may be benefiting is the city’s hotel industry. Occupancy taxes have increased in the library’s first year from $400,766 to $432,757, city records show. In thanks, a basket of flowers addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Reagan was sent Wednesday from the Radisson Hotel.

“They’ve really become a part of Simi Valley, and that’s the key to it,” said Mayor Greg Stratton, whose wife, Ede, works part time at the library as a ticket taker. “They’re not just some aloof institution up on the hill. They’ve really become a part of the community.”

About 230 local residents serve as volunteer docents at the library, and 70 volunteer in the gift shop.

“This has been very special to me,” said Supervisor Vicky Howard, who attended Wednesday’s celebration with Supervisor Maria VanderKolk and county Chief Administrative Officer Richard Wittenberg.

“I was involved from the beginning, from the first shovelful of dirt,” Howard said. “I think that it’s really an asset to the community, and I think that’s been demonstrated. It’s one of the greatest things that’s happened in my life.”