Little Rock, Ark. – A few years back, most tourists would arrive at the airport here and head to Hot Springs, a resort town about an hour down the highway.
They were drawn to the resort’s historic thermal bathhouses, a national park flowing with waters that helped give the town its name, and Oaklawn Park, a 101-year-old racetrack that was the winter home last year of 2004 Kentucky Derby and Preakness champion Smarty Jones.
Visitors joked that they spent a year in Little Rock one week. These days, the city is having the last laugh.
Little Rock, a Sleeping Beauty about to awaken, has been kissed by Bill Clinton – or, rather, the $165 million William J. Clinton Presidential Center, which the 42nd president dedicated in pouring rain in November.
Since that dreary opening day, the presidential library glistens in the spotlight. More than 260,000 visitors have passed through its doors in five months (initial projections were 300,000 in a year).
“We’re on our way to record visitors,” says Skip Rutherford, longtime FOB (Friend of Bill’s) and chairman of the foundation that helped raise funds to build the library.
Why so much attention?
“Clinton was the most interesting political figure in our times,” Rutherford says. And, he adds, “It is an architecturally significant building. It’s interesting, it’s interactive. It’s still riding the wave of the grand-opening press.”
Cary Martin, who owns Little Rock Tours, the city’s only daily sightseeing operator, says the Clinton library has turned the world’s attention to Little Rock. “On opening day, it was on the front page and at the top of every newscast around the world for a week.”
The sleek steel-and-glass library along the downtown riverfront has helped pump up the old River Market District warehouse area. Shops, restaurants, bars and nightclubs have moved there, including the Clinton Museum Store, which sells Presidential Center souvenirs and other Bill and Hillary memorabilia, from T-shirts, to paperweights, to traveling mugs, to Buddy and Socks goody bags, to a photo charm bracelet.
And, early next year, the area will get another boost with the opening of the 94,000-square-
foot headquarters for Heifer International, just east of the Clinton library.
The 60-year-old world hunger organization donates cows – heifers, specifically – and 27 other kinds of animals to people living in poverty in 50 countries. It’s the group you might have heard about at Christmastime encouraging shoppers to give meaningful gifts – buy a cow or a goat to pull a family out of poverty – instead of getting Mom and Dad another sweater and tie.
Local officials predict Heifer will draw three times more visitors than even the Clinton library. The library will benefit, they say, because – the structures being side by side – everyone who goes to one will go to the other.
“We’ve outgrown our current facilities and are renting space,” says Heifer spokesman Ray White. “It’s an environmentally functional building – it was built out of a lot of recycled materials. It’s going to look kind of industrial, but it’s interesting.”
The four-story building will be worth coming to see for its environmental components, White says. A gray water tower collects all the rainwater that falls, to be recycled. The elevator is deliberately slow to encourage people to use the stairs to conserve electricity. Heating and air conditioning are contained underneath a raised floor system. The building is thin so that light reaches more area.
Heifer eventually plans to construct an educational global village that would show visitors what poverty looks like and solutions to poverty and hunger around the world. Eight villages will transport visitors to Ecuador, Guatemala, Cameroon, South Africa, Indonesia, China, India and Romania.
“There is no place in the U.S. to really get a hands-on experience for most people of what this is like,” White says. “The greatest thing we could do is take everyone overseas to see these places. But we can replicate them and help people understand that 100,000 people a day are dying because of malnutrition and poverty. One billion people are living on less than $1 a day.”
Meanwhile, across the river, the town of North Little Rock has big plans too, with a riverfront attraction featuring two historic vessels moored end to end as part of the Arkansas Inland Maritime Museum.
The city acquired the former Navy submarine USS Razorback, named after a reddish whale and not the University of Arkansas mascot (it’s named for the razorback wild hogs that roam the Arkansas mountains).
The longest-serving submarine in history, the Razorback is the only submarine to earn battle ribbons in both World War II and Vietnam. It was one of 12 vessels in Tokyo Bay on Sept. 2, 1945, for the formal surrender by Japan aboard the battleship USS Missouri.
The United States sold the Razorback to Turkey in 1970, where it served in the Turkish navy almost 32 years as the Murat Reis before being decommissioned in 2001. North Little Rock paid Turkey $37,000 as scrap value and towed it here.
“Most of the pistons are working on it,” says Greg Zonner of Denton, Ark., a nuclear submarine veteran who was instrumental in obtaining the Razorback. “We could submerge her right here and bring her back up.”
Tours of the Razorback open to the public today. The museum is set to open July 4.
Tied up across from the Razorback will be the USS Hoga, a Navy tugboat that played a key role in Pearl Harbor during the Japanese attack on Dec. 7, 1941. It fought fires on the battleships, helped push the USS Nevada out of the channel so it wouldn’t block the harbor entrance and rescued sailors from the burning waters.
The tugboat later served as a firefighting boat for Oakland, Calif., from 1948 to 1996, and since has been part of a mothball fleet the Navy owns north of Oakland. North Little Rock was one of several cities competing for the Hoga, which is expected to arrive by fall.
The Hoga and the Razorback represent the beginning and the end of World War II, just like the sunken battleship USS Arizona, a memorial in Pearl Harbor for its 1,177 crewmen killed during the surprise attack, and the Japanese surrender battleship USS Missouri, now a museum in Pearl Harbor.
“We’ll be one of two cities in the world to have bookends to World War II,” says North Little Rock Mayor Patrick Hays. “We like to think that Honolulu has an apt companion for that honor.”
Hays refers to the “armada” along the riverfront, which also will include a barge with an outdoor restaurant, a gift shop and the 300-passenger paddle-wheel-style Arkansas Queen, a sightseeing and dinner cruise boat that will arrive from Tunica, Miss.
Hays cites the tens of millions of dollars that have gone into riverfront projects on both sides of the river, including a new multipurpose arena, doubling the size of the convention center, a trolley transportation system and a 14-mile pedestrian trail under construction that will connect Little Rock and North Little Rock.
He agrees that the Clinton library has had a huge impact on both communities.
“It’s the big kid on the block,” Hays says. “But the apple can’t be very good if the core is rotten. I dare say if those improvements hadn’t happened, the president would have been a lot less likely to locate his library here.”
Travel editor Mim Swartz can be reached at 303-820-1599 or travel@denverpost.com.
Highlights of the William J. Clinton Presidential Center include:
A replica of the White House Cabinet Room – the tallest brown leather chair bearing a brass plaque marked “The President” sits in a position of honor at the table’s center.
A full-size replica of the Oval Office, which has ropes at two doors to prevent onlookers from stepping in. Clinton and President George W. Bush met here after the library dedication in November. “Everyone thought it was the best wax museum they’d seen,” quips Skip Rutherford, head of the Clinton Foundation.
Sixteen alcoves dealing with policy issues in the Clinton administration, from “Restoring the Economy” to “Protecting the Earth” to “Building a Global Community” to “Preparing for New Threats.”
Key words and phrases are highlighted in yellow throughout the exhibits, but they somehow jump out more at “The Fight for Power,” which deals with the growing ideological division between Democrats and Republicans. It touches on Whitewater and the impeachment drive, and includes mention of Monica Lewinsky via a brief video clip as she flashes a smile. Highlighted text includes: CHARACTER ASSASSINATION. NEW AGGRESSIVE TACTICS. REJECTING the perjury charge. DEFEATING the obstruction of justice charge. COVERT EFFORT TO DISCREDIT THE PRESIDENT. TENS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS IN LEGAL FEES.
Rutherford says Clinton didn’t have to include the impeachment issue in his library, but he thought it should be discussed. “I remind everybody he was acquitted,” Rutherford says.
Presidential gifts from heads of state and dignitaries, which will be changed to keep the exhibit fresh. They now include a four-tower castle covered with cultured pearls, a gift of Nara Chandrababu Naidu, chief minister of Andhra Pradesh, India; a bronze ballerina, gift of Anatoly Sobchak, mayor of St. Petersburg, Russia; a sterling silver and gold warrior on a camel, a gift of Jordan’s King Hussein; and five saxophones, including one from Czech Republic President Vaclav Havel with mother-of-pearl keys and another with silver keys from Poland President Lech Walesa.
Hilarious videos from White House capital correspondents’ dinners, which will keep you in stitches.
Café 42, a 100-seat restaurant overlooking the Arkansas River, where you can get soups, sandwiches, pizzas, fries, beer, wine and – most important – Sen. Hilary Rodham Clinton’s Chocolate Chip Cookies (two for $1.95).
– Mim Swartz
