Vanderbilt University’s graduate campus in West Palm Beach will be a perfect fit for this region’s thriving financial and technology sectors, Vanderbilt Chancellor Daniel Diermeier told a Palm Beach Civic Association audience this week.
“When you have a university and a community and they are working together, magic can happen,” Diermeier said.
Diermeier spoke Wednesday at the Civic Association’s 2024 Directors’ Reception and Luncheon, attended by more than 100 people at Club Colette.
Vanderbilt secured approval from Palm Beach County commissioners last month to build a $520 million, 300,000-square-foot campus in downtown West Palm Beach.
It will be constructed on seven acres of land donated by the county and the city along Tamarind Avenue from Datura Street south to Fern Street.
The campus will have about 100 faculty and 1,000 students and could start hosting classes by 2026. It will be focused on business, artificial intelligence, data science and innovation, Diermeier said.
“The idea is to have a very, very solid presence of world-class research in computer science, AI and engineering and applied mathematics,” he said. “An investment on this scale has never been done in the history of higher education for a private university.”
The economic impact on the area will amount to $7 billion during the first 25 years and $24 billion over 75 years, the university has said.
The private university in Nashville is one of the leading research schools in the nation. While not an Ivy League school, Vanderbilt is known as a “Southern Ivy” because of its selective admissions process and strong academic reputation.
A $3.2 billion capital campaign, the largest in Vanderbilt’s history, was announced in the spring of 2023 and reached its goal 20 months ahead of schedule.
“The university has been on fire – in a good way,” Diermeier said. “There is a tremendous demand for students to go to Vanderbilt.”
Vanderbilt’s interest in West Palm Beach ignited a year ago with a brief conversation between Diermeier and Cody Crowell at a ball game at Vanderbilt. Crowell, who is a Vanderbilt graduate and an executive with the Frisbie Group real estate investment and development firm based in Palm Beach, told Diermeier that there was an opportunity for Vanderbilt to build a new campus in West Palm Beach.
By February, Diermeier had secured the support of Vanderbilt’s Board of Trust to locate a new campus in West Palm Beach, according to Michael Ainslie, who is the Civic Association’s treasurer and a member of its Executive Committee. Ainslie, a 1965 graduate and trustee emeritus of Vanderbilt, was instrumental in arranging Diermeier’s appearance at the Directors’ Reception.
Ainslie said financial firms in South Florida have available jobs that they have been unable to fill in quantitative engineering, data analytics, artificial intelligence, and high-tech computing.
“There is high demand for these positions but not a supply of [qualified] young people to fill them,” Ainslie said.
In the months leading up to the county’s approval of the project, Vanderbilt had been in discussions with city and county officials about establishing a local presence to complement the area’s financial and tech sectors.
Local officials, including West Palm Beach Mayor Keith James and then-Palm Beach County Mayor Maria Sachs, were very supportive, Diermeier said.
“We like to work fast, so we had everything conceptualized in a couple of months,” he said. “We were really delighted that there was strong interest from the community … We couldn’t ask for a better site.”
Vanderbilt is confident its new campus will be a magnet for talent, and it is excited to become part of the explosive growth that is transforming this area, he said.
“When students come to a place like Palm Beach County and West Palm Beach, they like to stay,” he said.
The Directors’ Reception was sponsored by Related Ross, which was represented by its CEO and Chairman, Stephen Ross, a Civic Association director since 2012.
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