Vanderbilt University is asking local Florida officials to approve its proposal to build a $520 million campus in the wealthy Palm Beach area, tapping into a growing region transformed by new outposts of financial firms.
The Nashville-based school envisions buildings totaling 300,000 square feet for 1,000 students and more than 100 faculty. The site in West Palm Beach was previously targeted by the University of Florida for a similar project that ultimately failed.
The first step took place this week. Vanderbilt officials askedWest Palm Beach to donate city and county land for the campus. West Palm Beach is located on the mainland, directly across the Intracoastal Waterway from mansion-lined Palm Beach.
“We are assessing the potential for expanding our business education and computing programs to West Palm Beach, an area of tremendous growth and investment in private equity, venture capital, fintech and investment banking,” Vanderbilt said in an emailed statement. “We are at an early stage of discussions with local leaders.”
Before Vanderbilt can go ahead, the county and city must conduct a detailed review of the project and, once that’s done, bring it up for a vote — a process that will take at least a month, said Palm Beach County Mayor Maria Sachs. The city and countyagreed to go ahead with that review during public meetings on Monday and Tuesday.
A shortage of elite school options — from kindergarten to college — has been a major sticking point for a wave of younger wealthy families who’ve moved to South Florida from New York, California and elsewhere to work at firms such as Ken Griffin’s Citadel, Blackstone Inc. And Goldman Sachs Group Inc. And there’s a dearth of top-tier universities to build up talent to feed those firms.
“We need to have great schools,” billionaire West Palm Beach developer Steve Ross said at a county commissioners meeting Tuesday. “There’s no place that has ever grown that doesn’t have great universities, great schools.”
The potential expansion of a brand-name college in Florida shows the dichotomy in US higher education today. Smaller colleges with dwindling student populations and few resources are closing, while an elite group of universities like Vanderbilt have the means to expand.
Vanderbilt, whose almost $10 billion endowment makes it one of America’s richest universities, plans to open the satellite campus on the land initially promised to the University of Florida. The proposed campus, set to launch as soon as fall 2026, will focus on business, artificial intelligence and data science programs, according to plans filed with West Palm Beach County. Vanderbilt will ask area donors, including alumni, to help cover startup costs.
Vanderbilt alumni started trying to lure the school to West Palm Beach last year after the University of Florida agreement collapsed. Vanderbilt already was exploring a second campus, and Chancellor Daniel Diermeier began to look at West Palm Beach after being approached by local alumni at a Vanderbilt football game.
Vanderbilt has more than 1,100 alumni in the West Palm Beach area, and they put together a plan to raise $300 million to help fund a campus. In April, Steve Ross hosted a reception at his Palm Beach mansion for Diermeier to discuss the fundraising plans and alumni support.
Ross has played a major role in developing downtown West Palm Beach, where the campus would be built, with new office and residential towers.
On Tuesday, Ross said Vanderbilt would help transform the region like Stanford University helped create Silicon Valley in Northern California. “To pass up this opportunity would be a crime,” Ross said at the commissioners meeting.
