Vanderbilt University has plans to expand from Tennessee into Florida, potentially developing a new $520 million campus in downtown West Palm Beach, the South Florida Business Journal reported.
The proposed campus would reportedly feature a college for computer science and artificial intelligence, as well as an “innovation hub” seemingly focused on entrepreneurship.
“It is not a satellite campus. It is a second campus,” J. Nathan Green, Vanderbilt’s vice chancellor of government and community relations, said in remarks reported by the Journal. “We will be as committed to this community as we are in Nashville.”
Vanderbilt officials presented details of the plan to the Palm Beach County Commission yesterday. Commissioners directed staff to begin negotiations to donate five acres to Vanderbilt, and the City Commission voted to donate two acres to the new campus project.
West Palm Beach, dubbed “Wall Street South” in recent years, is a growing hub for finance companies, which the university hopes to tap into by focusing on certain industry-related programs. Vanderbilt University chancellor Daniel Diermeier previously told local media that a campus in the Florida city would emphasize graduate degrees in the finance, data and technology industries, with a planned enrollment of about 1,000 students.
The move comes after the University of Florida hit pause on a similar plan to build a graduate school in West Palm Beach; the deal fell apart in 2022 after UF officials tried to purchase land for the campus but were unable to reach a deal with the seller.
“Given some regrettable divisions in the local community, the University of Florida is pausing deliberation about a possible West Palm Beach campus,” UF officials said in a 2023 news release announcing that the university would not move forward with that development.
