Apr 17, 2001 - 04:39 PM

Former President Reagan's Office Leaving LA Office Tower By Jeff Wilson Associated Press Writer

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Former President Reagan isn't renewing the lease in the Century City penthouse office tower where he entertained heads of state and others for more than a decade. Reagan's 10-year lease expires this year and won't be renewed, closing another chapter in the post-White House years of the nation's 40th chief executive.

"There's a lot of history here. But it doesn't make a lot of sense to have such a large space when he doesn't come here anymore," Reagan chief of staff Joanne Drake said Tuesday.

The 34th-floor office is a lavish 13,939-square-foot space atop Fox Plaza, the glass-and-granite structure perhaps best known as the building used in the 1988 Bruce Willis movie "Die Hard."

The rent is $18,000 a month, about 40 percent below current market value for the space, Drake said. Taxpayers pay for the office space of former presidents and there is no limit on the amount.

The four-member Reagan staff, as well as volunteers and interns, will move to a smaller office. A site hasn't been selected.

When Reagan returned to California in 1989, he divided his time between the office, trips to his Simi Valley presidential library and horseback rides at his ranch north of Santa Barbara.

Mother Teresa, Margaret Thatcher, former Presidents Clinton and Bush, former Vice President Dan Quayle and Billy Graham were among those who visited Reagan at Fox Plaza.

Western sculptures and paintings featuring California landscapes decorated the office, but it was the view out to sea and the Channel Islands that Reagan loved to show to visitors.

After he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease in 1994, his ranch was sold. Trips to the library soon ended and, in recent years, he stopped going to his office.

Reagan, 90, has been recuperating from a broken hip suffered in a January fall at home.

AP-ES-04-17-01 1638EDT © Copyright 2001 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

-- Anonymous, April 17, 2001