With a price tag topping $200 million, the Clinton Presidential Center will be the most expensive presidential library ever built.

The archives and museum documenting Bill Clinton's administration will be situated on a 27-acre complex in downtown Little Rock. In artists' renderings, the large glass library building perches on the banks of the Arkansas River, sticking out over the water as the land slopes towards the river. Around it are planned grassy open spaces, broken up by walkways and fountains.

Institute of Politics (IOP) Director David H. Pryor, a former senator from Arkansas and a longtime friend of Clinton who has known the former president since he was a teenager, is one of three trustees overseeing the library's fundraising and construction.

Pryor does not oversee the library's day-to-day progress--"It's not a place where I'll go down and see if they're laying the concrete right," he says--but he says he remains interested in the project's historical potential.

This project, like many of Clinton's other endeavors, has not escaped the touch of scandal. Two currently pending lawsuits stand in the way of the library, objecting to the way the city of Little Rock has paid for the land it bought for the presidential park.

The latest controversy, which has drawn national media attention, has swirled over a 5,000-square-foot penthouse planned for Clinton on the top floor of the library.

Eugene M. Pfeifer, who owns a three-acre riverfront plot located in the center of the proposed presidential library, has challenged the city's attempt to make him give up his land. He has claimed that the city government cannot use its eminent domain powers to seize his property if it will be used to build a residence for Clinton.

Pryor defends the apartment, calling it "very appropriate" that the presidential library would include a space for Clinton to stay since he plans to host programs at the library--and since Clinton owns homes in New York and Washington, but not in Little Rock.