ACU has purchased property from Maslow’s Coffee Company on the southwest corner of campus. 

Maslow’s announced the closing of the coffeeshop in June, and the property was put up for sale. ACU held a right of first refusal on the property, so after an initial offer was made by someone else, the university purchased the property. 

“We had a decision to act, either let it go or to purchase it and we felt because of its proximity to campus we just wanted to ensure that we knew what was going to go into that particular place,” said Kevin Campbell, senior vice president of the operations office. “We thought it was the best thing to go ahead and exercise our right and go ahead and purchase the property.” 

Initially, the university was in contact with another coffee company but because of COVID-19, the space is now being used as an extra classroom.

“We need flexible space with this environment that we’re in with COVID, and so for this first year we were going to do everything we could just to go ahead and keep it flexible space and so right now it’s actually serving as a classroom,” Campbell said. “We’ve had five or six different requests all kind of academic oriented to try to utilize the facility.”

As of right now, the plan is to keep the space flexible for academic use and reevaluate in the spring about a potential business moving into the property. 

“There’s certainly some different ideas being floated around and what we’re planning on doing is over the spring semester reviewing some of those ideas about what might be the best for a long term home in that particular space,” Campbell said. “We were pleased with Maslow’s there, we were grateful to have them as a neighbor and we have certainly been open to having another business like that.”