Virginia Tech’s New Innovation Campus in Alexandria

On Tuesday, September 14 th 2021, Virginia Tech broke ground on the much anticipated 3.5 acre Innovation Campus, a graduate school meant to expand the workforce for Northern Virginia’s booming tech sector. The 1 million-square-foot graduate campus will be part of a 65-acre mixed use development built by real estate giants JBG SMITH and Lionstone.

A big reason that Amazon chose to bring their HQ2 National Landing project to Crystal City was the highly educated workforce of our area and the promise from Virginia’s General Assembly and Virginia Tech to build the grad school in close proximity to Amazon’s campus. Other companies investing in Virginia Tech’s innovation campus include Qualcomm, Northrop Grumman and Boeing- who earlier this year gave Virginia Tech $50 million for financial aid and other diversity initiatives. Virginia Tech expects the campus to host approximately 770 students by 2030.

The new campus will triple Virginia Tech’s footprint in Northern Virginia, where approximately 60,000 alumni live. The campus will include academic classrooms, incubator space for new startups and research and development, office for industry collaboration, and convening space for alumni events. The development plans call for public open space and ground-floor retail, knitting the campus into the fabric of Alexandria. A new Potomac Yard metro station is going to be built on the south end of the campus providing easy access to Reagan National Airport, Crystal City and National Landing. Lionstone President Jane Page was quoted as saying “We are delighted to partner with Virginia Tech to transform this area into a leading center for innovation on the East Coast while setting a new standard for anchoring a mixed-use environment with a premier educational institution.”

*information obtained from https://vt.edu/innovationcampus/News/2019/June/innovation-campus-location.html

Link to Virginia Tech’s Innovation Campus Strategic Plan
https://vt.edu/innovationcampus/about/strategic-plan.html