Select Page

Austin Community College agreed to purchase 20 acres of land within the Leander Independent School District on which to build a new teaching center. The site was located on Cypress Creek Road, just south of Hwy 183 and within the Cedar Park city limits and also the Leander ISD. The move fulfilled a 1985 promise to build a campus within the Leander Independent School District in return for voter support in the ACC tax-base election. Indeed, support from Leander ISD contributed vitally to the margin of victory in the 1986 tax election. Thus the  ACC Board of Trustees, including ACC trustee Linda Hanson, a resident of the Leander ISD, set the process in motion. The new teaching center would be the first ACC facility in Williamson Country, and the Board action moving ahead with the purchase of property came just one week after the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board blocked an attempt by a citizens group to establish a Williamson County community college.

As the greater Austin metro area expanded, and as the number of students attending classes at Austin Community grew apace, building new ACC facilities gathered momentum. College expansion was easily justified; however, locating new campuses carried financial as well as emotional implications, sometimes good and sometimes bad. Such was certainly the case in the Cedar Park/Leander area, still bogged down in the 1980s economic doldrums, but future growth was a virtual certainty, and an ACC campus c wiould be one catalyst. Real-estate developers had deals to make; fast-food restaurants could feed (and feast on) the thousands of students, faculty, and staff converging on a campus neighborhood from early morning to late evening. And there would be headaches too: traffic clogging streets and roads running through existing residential neighborhoods and tax levies to support a college campus, to build and maintain new streets and roads, and new bus and other public transportation services.

Competition for selection of the new northwest campus site was led by Buttercup Joint Venture, which offered ACC 20 acres of property on Cypress Creek Road, southwest of Highway 183. College officials openly stated their preference for that site. Another potential location was off Bagdad Road in Leander. Block House Creek was a third contender, and a fourth was in the Quest Towne Center project.

For the time-being, the facility was designated a “teaching center,” which Mike De Vault, executive assistant to President Dan Angel explained was sort of a mini-campus with basic course offerings but without many “high-cost” technical programs. Hanging in the balance were two nearby ACC facilities occupying rental property: 620 Oaks and Rutherford, both of which were soon closed.

Source: Hill Country News, February 4, 1988