Group Pays Off $57-Million Reagan Library, Focuses on the Think Tank : Simi Valley: The money came from friends, big business and Japanese interests. The center plans to extend his legacy.

The private foundation that built the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library near Simi Valley has finished paying for the bricks and mortar and is now focused on developing a public policy think tank to carry the torch of Reagan-style conservatism.

The final $2-million payment on the $57-million hilltop complex was delivered earlier this month, said John J. Midgley, executive director of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation. The money for the 153,000-square-foot museum and research library came largely from Reagan’s wealthy friends, big business and Japanese interests.

“This is a real milestone,” Midgley said of the foundation’s ability to pay off the nation’s most expensive presidential library. “Everybody’s real pleased.”

Now, the foundation is concentrating on extending the Reagan legacy through the Ronald Reagan Center for Public Affairs, a fledgling think tank located in the basement of the library.

While the library looks to the past, detailing Reagan’s White House years, Midgley said, “the focus of the Center for Public Affairs is the future.”

In recent months, the public affairs center staff has begun organizing an ambitious series of conferences that Reagan associates say they hope will bring together political figures, business leaders and scholars from around the world to conceive new solutions to domestic and international problems.

The Reagan foundation’s board of trustees recruited former Secretary of State George P. Shultz a year ago as a member to help attract scholars and world leaders to upcoming events.

Conferences planned at the center cover a diverse range of topics, from arms control and the U.S. economy to establishing democratic institutions in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. The plan also calls for the seminars to be more than an academic exercise.

“These will not be like university seminars where you kind of sit around and exchange views and then go to lunch,” said Midgley, who also serves as the center’s director. “They have to be top-class and they have to have high impact.”

The first program, “Free Enterprise and Limited Government,” is scheduled for April 23 to 25. Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Jack Kemp has signed on as the conference’s chairman.

The program will focus on the U.S. economy and what role government can and should play in better equipping the country to compete in the global marketplace.

“I think it may be a very spirited conference,” said Martin Anderson, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and Reagan’s former domestic policy adviser. He said Kemp has invited him to attend and he expects the Clinton Administration’s new tax policies to be one of the topics of discussion.

A second conference, “Arms Control and Global Security,” is tentatively scheduled for mid-July and is being planned in cooperation with the Mikhail Gorbachev Foundation.

Midgley said he was in Moscow earlier this month arranging an agenda, which will examine the progress of the START II Treaty.

The historic pact signed in January by former President George Bush and Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin calls for the most sweeping cuts ever in the nuclear arsenals of both countries. It is expected to be formally approved by the U.S. Congress and Russian parliament later this year.

“We’re also going to look beyond START II and say, ‘What’s next?’ ” Midgley said.

Hopefully, he said, the program will include a joint appearance of Reagan and former Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev. But Gorbachev may exercise the option of addressing the conference via a satellite linkup. Other Russian political leaders are expected to attend.

Other conferences are also under consideration, with subjects ranging from problems confronting California to the American presidency and the press. No dates have been set.

Frederick J. Ryan, Reagan’s chief of staff and a member of the foundation, said it is not clear what role Reagan will actually play in the conferences. “He plans on being involved in all of them,” he said. “But whether or not he will actually attend each of the conferences has not been determined.”

Ryan dismissed any notion that because of Reagan’s age--82--he might play only a minor role in the center’s activities. “His age hasn’t slowed him down with any of the other activities of the library,” Ryan said.

Ironically, the Reagan public affairs center seems to mirror the efforts of the Jimmy Carter Center of Emory University in Atlanta. The Carter Center has been widely acclaimed as resurrecting Carter’s image since Reagan defeated him in 1980.

“It would be wrong to say that the Carter Center is a model,” Midgley said. “They have a different way of doing things.”

In the 11 years since its inception, the Carter Center has sponsored conferences on Middle East peace prospects, U.S. health care policy, arms control, Latin America’s debt and human rights.

“The goal of the institution extends far beyond the role of a think tank,” said Carrie Harmon, spokeswoman for the Carter Center. “What makes us different from other institutions is that we actually go out in the field and practice what we’ve learned.”

The difference, she said, is that Carter himself has been actively working with leaders of Third World countries to increase food production and eradicate diseases. Carter has also personally monitored new democratic elections in Zambia, Panama, Nicaragua, Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

With 120-person staff and a $25-million annual operating budget, the Carter Center also has sponsored conferences drawing speakers such as Gorbachev, Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, former President Gerald Ford and former Argentine President Raul Alfonsin.

For its part, the Reagan center has about $1.5 million in its coffers and another $8 million in uncollected pledges, said Walter F. Beran, treasurer for the Reagan foundation.

“Frankly, we have more ideas right now than we have resources,” said Midgley, who has a staff of three. The center has yet to establish an annual operating budget.

The foundation held a fund-raiser for the center on Feb. 6 to celebrate Reagan’s 82nd birthday. Tickets for the black-tie gala went for $500 apiece, and more than 500 people attended, including former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

In addition to the fund-raiser, Midgley said the foundation recently received a single contribution of more than $200,000 to help underwrite the economic conference in April. Midgley declined to name the donor.

As it is now situated, the Reagan center occupies about 29,000 square feet of office space in the library’s basement. In an arrangement worked out with the National Archives, the center does not pay rent but picks up the cost of utilities.

In addition to the director’s office, the center includes four offices, now empty, that will be made available to conference visitors, a large room for a future library and two meeting rooms, including one with accommodations for language translators.

Chester A. Newland, a professor at USC and student of the U.S. presidency, said he is pleased about the development of the Reagan center. He applauded the efforts of former Presidents to use their stature to create a forum for debating public policy.

“It’s hard to get that kind of clout or influential pull to draw people from all over the world together,” he said. “They can do things no one else can do.”

Midgley, a former scholar at Carnegie Mellon University who was named director of the Reagan center in October, said he is excited about helping tend the flame of the Reagan years.

“It’s thrilling,” he said. “But I find myself feeling very humble a lot. This is a very big responsibility. What we’re talking about here is the legacy of the 40th President.”