Vanderbilt University is moving forward with its plans for a graduate campus in West Palm Beach, more than a year after scoring its first approvals for the project.
The Nashville-based university is preparing to break ground on the $520 million campus, which will offer graduate programs in business and technology, according to a press release. It is the culmination of a years-long effort by both Vanderbilt and West Palm Beach real estate heavyweights to bring the “Harvard of the South” to the aspiring Wall Street South. Billionaire Related Ross chairman Steve Ross committed $50 million to the campus in April. He’s also hosted fundraisers on behalf of the school and advocated publicly for the project.
“To pass up this opportunity would be a crime,” he said at a county meeting in 2024. “There’s no place that’s ever grown that doesn’t have great universities, great schools.”
Ross has millions of square feet of office and residential towers in the pipeline in West Palm Beach, and he’s been on a mission to woo major institutions and corporations to fill them. Cleveland Clinic is set to anchor his planned 15 CityPlace with a 120,000-square-foot outpatient center, and he donated $50 million to for an additional 150-bed hospital Cleveland Clinic is planning at 400 and 450 South Australian Avenue, the Palm Beach Post reported.
Among the other real estate donors for Vanderbilt’s planned campus are billionaire Jeff Greene and Frisbie Group’s Cody Crowell, an alum who committed $5 million.
Vanderbilt launched its fundraising campaign for the West Palm Beach campus last year, with a goal of $300 million. The university did not confirm the total it raised in today’s announcement, but disclosed it would be launching a second phase aimed at raising $250 million.
Palm Beach County and West Palm Beach City officials voted in 2024 to gift the university 7 acres of publicly owned land for the campus. In the same vote, county commissioners approved a development and conveyance agreement (DCA) with Vanderbilt that requires the university to spend $300 million in capital expenditures and create 4,500 construction jobs with the project. Vanderbilt must also have 200 full-time employees, 1,000 total students and a $70 million annual operating budget within five years of beginning operations.
West Palm Beach won’t be the first satellite graduate campus for the university. It opened in New York City last year at a former Episcopal seminary in Chelsea at 440 West 21st Street.