By Jenny Kincaid Boone
Virginia Tech’s Innovation Campus celebrated a major milestone on Tuesday: the start of construction.
During a groundbreaking ceremony for the campus’ first academic building in Alexandria, a host of top government, university, and business leaders, including Virginia Tech President Tim Sands and Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, lauded the Innovation Campus for its mission to solve the nation and commonwealth’s critical needs for tech talent.
They spoke to a crowd of more than 200 supporters, all gathered under a large white tent at the campus’ construction site on Potomac Avenue.
“It’s a day many years in the making, made possible by a broad group of partners who were willing to support a bold vision to advance research, graduate education, and community engagement in the greater Washington, D.C., metro area,” Sands said.
Lance Collins, vice president and executive director of the Innovation Campus, joined Virginia Tech last year with a goal of creating a diverse graduate campus that offers graduate programs in computer engineering and computer science and project-based initiatives that embed industry leaders with students and faculty.
“Our vision for the Innovation Campus is to be both a place and a culture that unlocks the power of diverse people and ideas to solve the world’s most pressing problems through technology,” he said. “Diversity isn’t just a core value to me. It is a measure of excellence that will ensure the Innovation Campus delivers on its full potential.”
The campus’s first gem-shaped academic building, at 300,000-square-feet, will be built on an approximately 3.5-acre campus in the first phase of a new mixed-use development and innovation district that JBG SMITH is developing in North Potomac Yard near the future Potomac Yard Metrorail Station. The building’s design is focused on principles of sustainability, health and wellness, green and social spaces, accessibility, connectivity, flexibility, and integrated technology.
The university expects to welcome students, faculty, and staff into the completed building in the fall of 2024. Plans call for two other campus buildings, measuring about 150,000 square feet each, to be built as the campus grows. Meanwhile, graduate classes are being held at the university’s Northern Virginia Center in Falls Church.
