“Welcome to Palm Beach County,” county Mayor Maria Sachs said, as the room erupted in applause.
Sachs had just presided over the unanimous approval of Vanderbilt University’s proposed $520 million graduate school campus in West Palm Beach during the Palm Beach County commission meeting on Tuesday. All seven county commissioners agreed to gift the Nashville-based university 5 acres of county-owned land valued at $46 million. In the same vote, the board also approved the creation of a development and conveyance agreement (DCA) with Vanderbilt to set the project’s parameters.
The DCA includes a number of requirements for Vanderbilt’s planned campus, including that it must secure all permits and approvals for the development within four years, and begin construction within five years.
The DCA also requires that Vanderbilt spend $300 million in capital expenditures and create 4,500 construction jobs by the time the campus is completed. Within five years of starting operations at the campus, Vanderbilt must have 200 full-time employees, 900 students in degree-granting programs, 1,000 total students and a $70 million annual operating budget.
The county also mandated Vanderbilt spend $1 billion in connection to the graduate school campus within five years of opening its doors.
The approval marks the culmination of a six-month effort to bring the “Harvard of the South” to West Palm Beach. Behind-the-scenes talks with the university began in April, when reports also emerged that wealthy local residents were fundraising for the campus. Vanderbilt officially presented its vision for a graduate school campus dedicated to business and technology in August. Heavy hitters like Steve Ross, the billionaire head of Related Ross and a prolific West Palm Beach developer, came out in support of the university’s proposal.
“This whole county in the future will become what Silicon Valley is today,” Ross said at the August meeting. “To pass up this opportunity would be a crime.”
Local, business and university leaders once again spoke in favor of the proposal at Tuesday’s meeting. Proponents of the project included Frisbie Group Managing Director Cody Crowell, who is also a Vanderbilt alum and played for the school’s baseball team, and Business Development Board of Palm Beach President and CEO Kelly Smallridge.
West Palm Beach Mayor Keith James, who spoke in favor of the campus in August, gave another full-throated endorsement.
“The value Vanderbilt brings cannot be measured solely in financial terms,” he said. “We must frame it as a transformational opportunity.”
West Palm Beach agreed to donate $12.8 million of city owned parcels to the project last month.
Proponents of the campus emphasized the need for Palm Beach County to nurture its talent pipeline. Investing in brain power is crucial to courting major companies for relocation to “Wall Street South,” a decade-long endeavor championed by Smallridge, James and Ross.
“Education is the currency of economic development,” Smallridge said, adding that the BDB is in talks with a major company to bring 2,000 jobs to the county, but the firm was concerned about recruiting talent in the AI sector. She connected the company with Vanderbilt Vice Chancellor Nathan Green to assuage their concerns, she said.
“Already, Vanderbilt is sitting on our side of the table helping Palm Beach County recruit and retain businesses,” Smallridge said.