Vanderbilt Gets Thumbs up for $520M West Palm Beach Campus
The private institution continues to expand on the east coast.
Vanderbilt University has gotten the green light from West Palm Beach to build a new campus in South Florida.
The 300,000-square-foot project, which was approved unanimously by county commissioners, costs a total of $519.6 million, according to a report from Higher Ed Dive. Under the plan, the county will donate five acres of the seven-acre land, totaling $46 million.
The downtown West Palm campus is set to include artificial intelligence programming, data science, and an innovation hub that connects with entrepreneurs.
Classes at the campus could begin as soon as 2026.
Also, WPEC reported that Vanderbilt plans on spending $300 million for construction. The Nashville, Tennessee-based university expects the move to contribute to a “$7 billion economic impact,” within the first two and a half decades, according to the local affiliated CBS news outlet. The campus in the area will feature 200 full-time workers, 1,000 students, and an annual operating budget of $70 million.
“This is huge for us. I mean we’ve been thinking about our next chapter as a university and trying to find that next place,” Nathan Green, vice-chancellor of government and community relations, at Vanderbilt University said, according to WPEC.
“This is huge for our business school. This will double the size of our business school.”
The West Palm campus isn’t the only thing Vanderbilt has its sights on. The private institution said in September that it was expanding into New York City with a campus lease in Chelsea for a 13-building property, amounting to 150,000 square feet. While Vanderbilt said it was in the early stages of exploring the metro area, it hopes to expand research collaborations, support alumni and active students, and boost engagements with businesses.
According to Vanderbilt, it has more than 7,000 undergraduate students, as 94 percent live within its campus for all four years.
Meanwhile, student housing preleasing in August for the Fall 2024 semester at 175 universities tracked by RealPage slipped to 92.8 percent compared with 94.4 percent in the same period a year ago.