For a man focused on size — from crowd sizes to TV ratings to tax cuts — the proposed site for Donald Trump’s presidential library would appear to be the smallest in acreage of any modern president.
On Sept. 23, Gov. Ron DeSantis offered up 2.63 acres in downtown Miami as the location for the Donald J. Trump presidential library. The land belongs to Miami-Dade College, which uses it for an employee and faculty parking lot at the adjacent campus.
According to an online review, however, the parcel alone would make the Trump presidential site the smallest of any for a post-World War II president. Currently, the most compact location is the 6-acre Gerald Ford museum in Grand Rapids, Michigan. But that count does not include the archival center located about 130 miles to the east in Ann Arbor at the University of Michigan.
Trump could opt for something similar — an archival center at the downtown Miami site and a more expansive museum elsewhere.
Other presidential sites that combine archives and museum displays of comparable and larger expanses include the 9-acre Richard Nixon site in Yorba Linda, California. That location also houses the 37th president’s childhood homestead as well as the Marine One helicopter on which he departed the White House on the day he resigned the presidency.
The John F. Kennedy presidential site and museum at Columbia Point in Boston is 10 acres. The Harry Truman library logs in at 16 acres in Independence, Missouri.
The Jimmy Carter presidential site sits on 20 acres in Atlanta. Bill Clinton’s presidential center in Little Rock is in a 29-acre park. Lyndon Johnson’s encompasses 30 acres in Austin, Texas.
Property next to the Freedom Tower in downtown Miami is being offered for President Donald Trump presidential library.
Ronald Reagan’s presidential complex covers 300 acres in California’s Simi Valley. The Reagan museum includes the actual Air Force One aircraft he used. It is situated in an enclosed atrium.
Still, DeSantis said the Miami location would offer a fitting tribute to the 45th and 47th president.
“President Trump has achieved results for the American people and made a lasting impact on our nation’s history,” DeSantis said in his prepared statement. “No state has better delivered the President’s agenda than the Free State of Florida, and we would be honored to house his presidential library here in his home state.”
President Donald Trump is most closely associated with Mar-a-Lago and Palm Beach.But Gov. Ron DeSantis has proposed a 2.63-acre site in downtown Miami for his presidential library.
A Miami-Dade College officials said serving as host for a Trump library would be an honor.
“I think this is an amazing opportunity for our community to have a presidential library,” said Roberto Alonso, a member of the Miami-Dade College Board of Trustees.
“I mean, how many other cities have the opportunity to have a presidential library that will attract people to see it, but it will also allow our community to go learn more about the highest office in the United States, which is the office of the president?”
The Boyd Co., a Boca Raton-based corporate site selection research firm, said in an email to The Palm Beach Post that it believes the college’s parcel is worth upward of $100 million.
The company’s principal, John Boyd Jr., said a Trump presidential library could have an economic impact in South Florida that “will far exceed” the land’s value and surpass the $2.9 billion generated by Clinton’s library in Little Rock during its first decade.
Boyd said that’s most of any presidential center for that range of time, followed by the $2 billion from the George W. Bush Presidential Center on the Southern Methodist University campus in Dallas.
Antonio Fins is a politics and business editor at The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY Florida Network. You can reach him at afins@pbpost.com. Help support our journalism. Subscribe today.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Miami site for Trump presidential site smallest of modern presidents