So, it seems the fix isn't in.

News broke recently that the committee running the Barack Obama Presidential Library is none too pleased with the two Chicago proposals, putting Columbia University and New York into the lead in this political horse race (also-ran Hawaii will get some sort of consolation prize, like continuing to be a tropical freaking paradise).

What's the beef? As so often in Chicago, it's all about real estate and potential lawsuits. The committee required that proposals include concrete information about exactly where the library would be built and how the land would be acquired. Columbia owns its site outright, but both the University of Illinois at Chicago and the University of Chicago ignored this part of Professor Obama's exam and so are in danger of flunking.

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The University of Chicago was vague about its location until its hand was forced. Just as people thought, even after dropping the potential South Shore Country Club site, it wants Chicago Park District land near its campus, in Washington and Jackson parks.

That's the rub: Anything involving park district land will lead to lawsuits, as George Lucas and his museum gang have learned. Friends of the Parks and other civic watchdogs take their jobs as seriously as junkyard pit bulls, and even land swaps that might lead to net gains in public space will be contested. The approval process for the land might delay the project for years. There is talk from Mayor Rahm Emanuel that the park district will give the land to the city, but even that will be grounds for opposition.

Obama, by the time ground is broken for this library, will have had eight years of constant argument from friend and foe alike. You cannot blame him for wanting a smooth process as he retires to golf, public speaking and complicating security for Parents Weekend at whatever universities his daughters attend.

The University of Illinois at Chicago is undergoing some leadership changes, and it also doesn't have title to the lands where it wants to build. Its futuristic plan includes capping the Eisenhower Expressway, which my research into tinfoil hats indicates requires approval not just from the city and state departments of transportation but also NASA and the Jedi Council. Friends of the Parks probably will sue on general principles, to save the verge plantings from being blighted by the shadows of the new structure.

Sometimes, though, this sort of speed bump is what Homer Simpson called “a crisitunity!”

HERE'S WHERE IT SHOULD GO

U of C, UIC and the city can team up and support a site that the city already owns (and is paying ruinous interest on)—a site that will help redevelop an historic African-American neighborhood as well as bring more tourists to Chicago's neglected South Side lakefront.

I refer, of course, to the former Michael Reese Hospital campus on the Near South Side lakefront. You may recall that the city bought the property (ultimately, it's going to cost about $120 million) to build the athletes' housing for the 2016 Olympics.

So, just as soon as our Olympics are over, we demolish this prefab village and begin construction on the Obama library.

Wait, let me Google that . . . Brazil? Really? Didn't they just have the World Cup? Doesn't seem fair, but I don't follow Olympic sports.

Even better! The land sits vacant, awaiting development. Suspicious types suspect that this obvious parcel hasn't been in the running due to its potentially lucrative proximity to the lakefront, but even after the end of the Great Recession, private developers haven't been knocking down the city's door to build more soulless condos there.

All it would take is the University of Chicago extending its reach a bit farther north. Instead of strolling across Washington Park to study at this library, people would have to travel about 4 miles to Bronzeville. Or 4 miles south from Loop hotels. Great public transportation links with Metra, Red and Green Line el stations all are a short walk west. With a restored street grid, entrepreneurs will open the coffee shops, bars and restaurants that fuel scholarship and tourism.

This site also would link nascent development in the South Loop around the DePaul hotel-arena and McCormick Place with extent historic sites like the Stephen A. Douglas Tomb at 35th Street. That's just a short walk to historic Drexel Boulevard, and suddenly, Hyde Park doesn't seem so far away at all.

Here's hoping that Emanuel can do his famed Hulk imitation and get the puny Bruce Banners down on the Midway to see the light and relocate their proposed Obama presidential library away from Washington Park and to Bronzeville.

That would be a good thing. For the university, for the city and for the neighborhood. Let's fix the fix already.

Bill Savage is associate professor of instruction in English at Northwestern University