So a sense of shock and dismay, as measured in the breathlessness of radio news reports and the size of a virtual rally on Facebook, has attended the announcement last month that the university plans to close the Cactus in August, citing, of all things, the university’s own contraction. Under orders from Gov. Rick Perry to identify potential spending cuts of 5 percent, officials say the closing could save the university $66,000 in its $2 billion annual budget.

Image Austin has lost several music sites over the years, but the closing of the Cactus Cafe has hit a nerve among its music-loving residents. Credit... Erich Schlegel for The New York Times

“I was in the van crossing Texas on the way to a gig when I first heard of the proposed closing of the Cactus, and after the first wave of sadness a familiar despair set in,” wrote Guy Forsyth, widely regarded as the hardest-working bluesman in Austin, in a post on his blog. “This was not the first club I have seen close, nor the first home I have lost. And I wondered of the battle of Art vs. Cash, and the sad history of that long war.”

Musicians and their admirers have hardly been alone in their sporadic clashes with the university, which spent much of the last century gradually displacing the black population of East Austin by building a baseball stadium, fueling station and facilities maintenance buildings over the neighborhood once known as Blackland.

But in relation to the city’s much-acclaimed music scene, the university has evolved into a sort of double agent. Its undergraduate student body of about 30,000 provides a continually replenished source of clubgoers, while its research laboratories incubate new lines of business that draw downtown condominiums, soaring rents and, eventually, noise complaints.