By John F. Harris
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 13, 1997; Page A23

President Clinton, who lately has been talking about the legacy he hopes to leave, has come to a decision about where he will leave it: Little Rock.

The state capital someday will be home to Clinton's presidential library, which will be affiliated with the University of Arkansas, the White House announced yesterday.

In picking Little Rock, where Clinton served as governor and attorney general for 16 years before coming to Washington, he disappointed boosters of Fayetteville. That community is home to the university's main campus, and both the president and Hillary Rodham Clinton lived there while serving on the law faculty in the 1970s.

Some in Arkansas had speculated that Clinton might even want to locate his presidential papers in Hot Springs, where he grew up. But a White House official familiar with the decision said the choice came down to Little Rock vs. Fayetteville.

Clinton made his decision public yesterday in a letter to university president Alan Sugg. He told Sugg that he hoped the library will "employ the most advanced technology to touch every part of Arkansas and American life" at the same time it tells the story of his presidency.

Also yesterday, Clinton tapped an old friend, Little Rock public relations executive Skip Rutherford, to "coordinate the local planning process in Arkansas." Rutherford said he plans to work with the university to help settle on a specific site for the library; he said that no fund-raising has been done for the project.

Clinton lagged a bit in deciding where to place his library. President George Bush had selected Texas A&M University at College Station by May 1991, 18 months before his first (and, involuntarily, his only) term came to an end.

Presidential libraries are becoming increasingly elaborate affairs, complete with museums and gift shops, along with the usual archives of presidential papers. Bush's library, on a 90-acre site, was projected to cost $40 million in private funds raised by the university. It is scheduled to open later this year.