Virginia Tech has announced plans to build an Innovation Campus in Alexandria as part of a new mixed-use development in National Landing, just steps away from the future Potomac Yard Metrorail Station,
Tim Sands, president of the university, says the 1 million-square-foot graduate campus will be part of a 65-acre mixed-use district planned and developed by Lionstone Investments and real estate investment trust JBG SMITH.
The campus’s strategic location, on 15 acres just south of the Four Mile Run stream that separates Alexandria and Arlington, positions Virginia Tech and its future partners near the nation’s capital, diverse industries, and leading tech companies, including Amazon and its HQ2 project.
“We’re extremely pleased to have this opportunity, in partnership with Lionstone, to establish the Innovation Campus in the heart of the National Landing technology district,” Sands said. “It is the ideal location to support Virginia Tech’s bold plan to develop new tech talent, disciplines, programs, and human-centered research that will shape the economic future of the commonwealth and beyond.”
The campus will include academic classrooms, incubator space for startups and research and development, offices for industry collaboration, and convening space for alumni events. The development plans call for public open space and ground-floor retail.
A new Metro station is being developed at the south end of the property, which will provide mass transit service. Reagan National Airport will be one Metro stop north of the site; the planned Amazon headquarters will be two stops away.
The first class of Innovation Campus master’s degree students will enroll in fall 2020 in existing space adjacent to where its new academic buildings will eventually be built. When it is completed in about 10 years, the campus will enroll 750 master’s candidates and hundreds of doctoral students and postdoctoral fellows.
The new campus will triple Virginia Tech’s footprint in Northern Virginia, where about 60,000 alumni live. The university now has seven facilities throughout the region, with operations in Old Town Alexandria, Arlington, Fairfax, Falls Church, Leesburg, Manassas, and Middleburg.
“This beautiful site provides a unique opportunity to expand our presence in the region and build a campus from the ground up,” says Dwayne Pinkney, Virginia Tech’s senior vice president of operations and administration.
