LITTLE ROCK, ARK. ? Suppose you just happened to have 80 million pages of paper, 2 million photographs, 20,000 videotapes and 77,000 gewgaws and knickknacks. What would you do with them?

Well, if you were Bill Clinton, you’d haul them all to Little Rock, hire an award-winning New York architect to design a $165 million home for them and then open it to scholars and the public after a four-day party starting today.

The William J. Clinton Presidential Center, a gleaming, 148,000-square-foot glass-and-steel box, opens Thursday amid fanfare that includes a concert by Aretha Franklin, Clinton’s favorite singer.

All the living former presidents are slated to attend, as well as a host of celebrities, among them Ben Affleck, Barbra Streisand and Bono. And there will be glitzy private parties all over town, including one said to be planned at the condo of actors Mary Steenbergen and Ted Dansen.

It’s the biggest thing that has ever hit Little Rock.

The library, repository of the largest collection of presidential material in the United States, includes the saxophone Clinton played on “The Arsenio Hall Show,” and a full-scale replica of the Oval Office, complete with a pot of ivy that sat on the mantel when Clinton was there.

Yes, the library contains documents involving Clinton’s impeachment, Ken Starr’s investigation and the Monica Lewinsky affair, said library director David Alsobrook. But, no, the infamous stained blue dress will not be on display. The archive simply doesn’t have it.

The building itself is breathtaking.

It cantilevers 90 feet to the banks of the Arkansas River and seems to float there, an intentional bow to Clinton’s mantra of “building a bridge to the 21st century.” More than 150,000 pounds of glass offer sweeping vistas of the city’s skyline and flood the interior with light.

The Archive Building, right, of the Clinton Presidential Center and Library is shown next to the Scholars' Garden at the site near downtown Little Rock, Ark. Dedication ceremonies for the library are scheduled for Thursday.

The building won a National Design Award last month.

But, said library foundation President Skip Rutherford, “I don’t believe the theory (that) if you build it they will come. You have to offer them something.”

And the foundation has. The museum features a 110-foot interactive time line of the Clinton presidential years, plus permanent exhibits that use documents, photos and videos to showcase Clinton’s life in the White House.

The complex, surrounded by a 27-acre park where derelict train tracks and abandoned warehouses once stood, is “the first ‘green’ presidential library in the country,” Rutherford said. It has 306 solar panels, 10 miles of underground radiant heating and so many other conservation features it uses 34 percent less energy than a normal building its size.