Austin Community College celebrates opening of new building at Highland Campus
Megan Menchaca
Austin Community College held the grand opening of Phase 2 of its Highland Campus on Friday — more than 10 years after the college first purchased the former shopping mall where the campus is located.
The Highland Campus in North Austin was once the home of Highland Mall, which was Austin’s first indoor shopping mall when it opened in 1971. ACC began purchasing parts of the mall in 2010 and has opened parts of the new campus in phases on the site, starting with Phase 1 in 2014.
Friday's event celebrated the opening of Building 2000, a 415,000-square-foot building that includes performing arts venues, a student-run restaurant, art galleries and music recording labs. Classes in the building began in spring 2021, although the official grand opening was delayed until this month because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Richard Rhodes, the ACC chancellor, said the area where the campus is located has been an important part of the Austin community for decades. After its transformation into a college, he said the school now helps teach and train the future workforce of Central Texas with advanced facilities, such as production studios and manufacturing labs.
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“What's happening here is more than just the opening of a college campus. It’s about working together in collaboration to build a better future,” Rhodes said. “It's about innovation and developing new, more effective ways of learning to help our students be successful. It's about transforming this land into a world-class learning environment that will transform the lives of thousands of individuals.”
In a November 2014 bond election, voters approved two bonds representing $386 million in capital improvements for ACC, including a new campus in Leander and renovations for the other ACC campuses. The bond provided about $152.8 million for Phase 2 of ACC’s Highland Campus.
The VIP grand opening of Phase 2 featured a campus tour; speeches by city and college leaders; a ribbon-cutting; and the premiere performance of ACC’s new song, which included a rap and Spanish lyrics. ACC will be holding an open house for the community with interactive tours and panel discussions 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday to welcome the public to the campus.
During the grand opening, Nan McRaven, ACC Board of Trustees chair, praised how the school is collaborating with other organizations through its Fashion Incubator, Culinary Institute and the ACCTV television studios, which have a partnership with Austin PBS, Austin's public television station.
“Highland Mall is a special place to me, because, of course, perhaps like many of you, I shopped here in the '70s in the '80s,” McRaven said. “We have succeeded in transforming this space into something special for the community, for our students and for the neighborhood, and I'm very, very proud of what we were able to do."
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Austin Mayor Steve Adler said that while he’s concerned about a lack of affordability in Austin contributing to less innovation, diversity and art in the city, ACC and its students attending the new building at the Highland campus will be able to contribute to solving the issue.
“Affordability has two parts to it. You try to make things cost less, and certainly we're engaged in that as best we can with bonds and subsidies and programs, but the other way you deal with affordability is you help people have more money to spend,” Adler said during the event. “(How) do we help people have more money to spend? It is this campus and it is ACC.”
Future ACC Highland phases will include parking facilities, the college’s administrative offices, its TV studios and community spaces. The full campus will be 1.2 million square feet with classroom space for 21,000 students, according to a media release from the college.
ACC student Saliyah Parker told the American-Statesman that ACC has helped her achieve her goals and pursue an education with the “state-of-the-art facilities” located at the Highland Campus, and she’s excited to see how ACC grows to continue helping students.
“I definitely think the money and the time and the effort that they put into these buildings and these updates are really going to be beneficial to the students taking these courses to give them a real-world experience before they step out so they have something to reference when they start their careers,” Parker said.
