DALLAS - First lady Laura Bush said Wednesday that she doesn't expect a decision to be made on the site for the George W. Presidential Library before at least the end of the year.
Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Baylor University in Waco and the University of Dallas in Irving are finalists for the library.
"The first of the year would be my guess," Mrs. Bush said in an interview with The Dallas Morning News during a campaign fundraising stop in Fairmont, W.Va. "Or, maybe, the end of the year."
She said that the process of picking a site is complicated with a lot of negotiations and "give-and-take from all the sites that are interested."
"It just takes a lot longer than you think it might," she said. "There's a lot of legal parts that are associated with it."
The library is expected to cost at least $200 million.
Of the potential sites left, SMU is Mrs. Bush's alma mater, while Baylor is about 15 miles from Crawford, where the Bushes own a ranch.