Prominent developer and Palm Beach resident Jeff Greene and his wife, Mei Sze Greene, are giving more than an acre of prime land to Vanderbilt University for a planned graduate business school in downtown West Palm Beach.
The donation accelerates the project by unifying contiguous parcels of land and advancing Vanderbilt’s presence in South Florida, the university said in a statement this week.
The land being donated by the Greenes is next to seven acres already given to the university by the city of West Palm Beach and Palm Beach County. The Greenes’ contribution, about 1.3 acres in eight parcels along Sapodilla Avenue, will boost Vanderbilt’s campus to more than 8 acres.
The campus will be built along South Tamarind Avenue, from Datura Street south to Fern Street, in a section of the city known as “Government Hill.” The Greenes’ gift will bring it east to Sapodilla Avenue, extending from Datura Street on the north side down to Evernia Street.
The school is expected to open in the fall of 2029 with about 100 faculty members and 1,000 students.
The Greenes’ land gift is reportedly valued at around $80 million.
Vanderbilt Chancellor Daniel Diermeier said the donation will allow the university to design a cohesive campus where classrooms, labs and community spaces come together seamlessly.
“We are deeply grateful to Jeff and Mei Sze for their generous commitment, which reflects something we have seen again and again in West Palm Beach and Palm Beach County: a deep understanding of education and research as catalysts for opportunity and growth,” Diermeier said.
Greene said the donation reflects his and Mei Sze’s longstanding commitment to education and to the future of West Palm Beach.
“We acquired these and other adjacent parcels in 2012, when the economy here was very bad, and almost no one was willing to invest here,” Greene said. “We were approached to sell or develop our land on these blocks many times, but we always knew that our land, when combined with the city and county land, was the last big assemblage left in downtown West Palm Beach.”
Greene said their hope that was that, together with the city and county, they could attract a hospital, museum, stadium or university to the prime downtown parcels.
“Getting Vanderbilt University to open a 1,000-student graduate campus on our land is literally our dream come true,” said Greene, who has been a Civic Association director since 2014.
West Palm Beach Mayor Keith James said transformational projects like Vanderbilt’s West Palm Beach campus become possible when visionary institutions and committed community leaders come together.
“The Greenes’ generous gift strengthens the foundation for a campus that will drive innovation, expand opportunity, and fuel economic growth for decades to come,” James said.
Michael Ainslie, treasurer of the Palm Beach Civic Association and a 1965 graduate and trustee emeritus of Vanderbilt, said the Greenes’ donation is enormously generous.
“It really completes the Vanderbilt footprint, which is going to be a vastly important addition to our broader community,” Ainslie said.
The new campus will be a magnet for talent and business development in West Palm Beach, he said. “The creation of this graduate program in both business and space science and technology will be an enormous boost to the environment for entrepreneurship.”
In November 2024, Diermeier told the Palm Beach Civic Association that the graduate campus will be a perfect fit for this region’s thriving financial and technology sectors.
“The idea is to have a very solid presence of world-class research in computer science, AI and engineering and applied mathematics,” Diermeier said at a Civic Association directors’ luncheon at Club Colette. “An investment on this scale has never been done in the history of higher education for a private university.”
In January 2026, Diermeier said the private Nashville-based university had reached a fundraising goal needed to build the campus. Vanderbilt had said it wanted to raise about $300 million for construction toward the $520 million campus.
Diermeier said the school is now focused on a $250 million campaign to raise money for its facilities as well as faculty recruitment, student scholarships, academic programs and curriculum.
Greene is a real estate investor and prominent developer in West Palm Beach. He built two West Palm Beach apartment complexes and is constructing the One West Palm mixed-use complex at 550 N. Quadrille Boulevard.
In 2016, the Greenes built The Greene School on South Dixie Highway in West Palm Beach. It began as a private school for advanced children in early childhood, then expanded to include high-school students.
Greene’s fortune has been estimated by Forbes at between $5.1 billion and $9 billion.
Photo credit: Joshua Prezant
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