The thing about dynamic and innovative organizations like Austin Community College is that about the time they become comfortable places to work and play, circumstances change, creating a sense of loss and confusion. In 1998, psychologist Spencer Johnson wrote a popular allegory called Who moved My Cheese to help employees understand and deal with change in the workplace.
By 1990, the Rio Grand Campus was ACC’s largest, with 9,500 students in a historic building that the College leased from the Austin Independent School District, another rapidly-growing organization that also was hard-pressed for space. ACC had spent spent $2 million on improvements to the Rio Grand campus in 1986 and signed a five-year lease agreement at that time. In addition to annual lease payments from ACC of $230,000, the terms of the lease included a provision for giving ACC just one academic year’s notice before asking the College to leave.
AISD had options for additional space, and Stephen Kinslow, ACC’s dean of the Rio Grande Campus, urged everyone involved to avoid a heated public arguments like what followed ACC’s closing of Ridgeview. AISD board chair Bernice Hart agreed that a public “ruckus” would create a bad “helter-skelter image. “We don’t want “a fight with anybody.” Fortunately, AISD found alternative space in the short term and eventually sold the Rio Grand Campus to ACC.
Source: Austin American-Statesman, April 5, 1990, Speak-easy: ACC Faculty and Staff Newsletter, June 26, 1990