Coverage of Bush Library Complex (13th Presidential Library) - Dallas Star-Telegram story

With a toss of a dirt-filled shovel, former President George W. Bush on Tuesday kicked off work on his presidential complex. "The speeches are over," he said. "It is time to shovel dirt."
Bush was joined by his wife, Laura, and about 3,000 friends and acquaintances to formally begin the process of building his presidential center, which includes a library, museum and policy institute. "This is the beginning of a process," he said. "It’s the continuation of a journey that began over a decade ago."
Bush's library will be the nation’s 13th official presidential library, the first built in the 21st Century, and the third in Texas. The other two in Texas are the George H.W. Bush library at Texas A&M University in College Station and the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library at the University of Texas in Austin.
Construction begins immediately on the privately funded, 226,565-square-foot complex on a 23-acre tract of land on the eastern edge of the Southern Methodist University campus, about five miles from downtown Dallas.
The Texas-style presidential complex, expected to cost more than $300 million, will include a library, museum and policy institute. Bush said about 160,000 donors made sure the project was paid for before the groundbreaking ever began.
The complex designed by New York architect Robert A.M. Stern and landscaped by Michael Van Valkenburgh, will feature a three-story building with a life-sized Oval Office that opens up to a Texas Rose Garden overlooking the Dallas skyline.
There will be a Freedom Plaza, a Freedom Hall, exhibits, a restaurant, classrooms, research rooms, offices, seminar rooms, an auditorium and a presidential suite. Inside, about 80 terabytes of digital information, including 200 million e-mails, along with more than 43,000 artifacts from the Bush administration, will be stored or displayed.
The George W. Bush Institute will be housed here and a 15-acre urban park will surround the complex.
As a tribute to Texas, most materials for the complex will be obtained from within 500 miles of Dallas; the exterior's red brick and Texas limestone are meant to blend in with SMU's red brick buildings. Outside, bluebonnets and wildflowers will be part of the landscaping that will include a tall grass prairie, wildflower meadow, savanna woodland, wet prairie and flood-plain forest.
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