(Rebecca Keay / The Daily Campus)

The grass in the rose garden has been cut and the trees in the courtyard have been trimmed. The statue of 41 and 43 has been polished from head to toe. The last chair has been put neatly in its place out front of 2973 SMU Blvd.

The big day is finally here.

“This is where Laura and I will spend the rest of our lives,” President Bush said in an exclusive interview with The Daily Campus.

After 12 years in the making, the George W. Bush Presidential Center is finally opening on SMU’s campus, but the university’s path to obtaining the rights to build the 226,000-sq.-foot center was a long and drawn-out process.

When Bush took office in 2001, there were six universities and one city fighting for the library.

By late 2006, just Baylor and SMU were still in the running. 

On Feb. 22, 2008, SMU was announced as the home for the presidential library.

But the Bush Foundation was still millions of dollars away from constructing the library that President and Mrs. Bush envisioned. The foundation’s initial goal was set at $300 million in 2008 and asked for donations from supporters around the country.

In just five years, the Bushes far exceeded their goals. According to The Dallas Morning News, the Bush Foundation hit the $500 million mark this month – the most money ever raised for a presidential library.

A list of donors, who contributed more than $1 million will have their names immortalized on one of the first walls visitors will see when they enter the center.

These donors include Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, Dallas-based AT&T, Major League Baseball and SMU’s own, Harold and Annette Caldwell Simmons.

Many of these major donors will attend the dedication, but they’ll hardly be the guests of honor.

Five members of “the world’s most exclusive club” are slated to make appearances at the dedication.

Presidents Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama will join President Bush and his family in welcoming the center to SMU’s campus.

Earlier this week, Obama announced that his stay in Texas will also include his attendance at the memorial services at Baylor University in Waco for victims of the West, Texas fertilizer plant explosions.

President Bush will also have other guests: protestors. The center has been surrounded by controversy since the announcement that it would include the Bush Institute, a policy center that focuses on six key tenets that Bush has carried with him since his presidency. Those tenets are economic growth, education policy, global health, human freedom, woman’s initiatives and military service.

The institute is dedicated to research in these fields and has already established several joint programs with the university.

In 2008, many professors were worried that the relationship with the institute would cause SMU to lean to the right.

Some are still worried, but the controversy has died down to some extent.

The center, which will also include a library and museum, archives, a cafe, a gift store and offices for the Bush Foundation, opens to the public on May 1.

Officials from the center expect to see more than 500,000 visitors in its first year.

Once the attention from the dedication and the opening dies down, though, the former president hopes to slip back to where he’s been since 2009 – away from the public eye, living happily and quietly in Dallas’ Preston Hollow in what he describes as his “final chapter.”

“I hope it’s a long chapter,” President Bush said on SMU’s Founder’s Day, “But however long it is, it’s going to be here.”