This article offers a critical examination of one regional institution's endeavor to imagine, develop, and implement a sustainable campus-wide writing-intensive program. Grounded in local and institutional contexts, our narrative elucidates how WPAs at rural and regional institutions can reconcile the processes of negotiation and concession to secure adequate funding and program resources for developing WAC/WID initiatives. Institutional locale, we argue, circumscribes the potential affordances and risks that can befall writing-intensive programs and necessitates reconciling the delicate balance of negotiation and concession while attending to institutional "fit" and needs. At rural and regional campuses, in particular, the concept of "fit" within local exigencies is paramount to capitalizing on the affordances that geographical and organizational positionality generates.