Vanderbilt University is moving ahead with its plan to build a graduate campus in West Palm Beach. The university, based in Nashville, will soon begin construction on the $520 million project, which will offer graduate programs focused on business and technology.
The initiative follows years of collaboration between Vanderbilt and key figures in West Palm Beach’s real estate sector. Steve Ross, billionaire chairman of Related Companies, has played a significant role by committing $50 million to the campus. He has also hosted fundraising events for the university and publicly supported the project. At a county meeting in 2024, Ross said, “To pass up this opportunity would be a crime. There’s no place that’s ever grown that doesn’t have great universities, great schools.”
Ross is involved in several development projects in West Palm Beach, including office and residential towers. His efforts to attract major institutions include securing Cleveland Clinic as an anchor tenant for his planned 15 CityPlace building with a 120,000-square-foot outpatient center. Additionally, he donated $50 million toward a new 150-bed hospital planned by Cleveland Clinic at South Australian Avenue.
Other notable donors for Vanderbilt’s West Palm Beach campus include billionaire Jeff Greene and Cody Crowell of Frisbie Group—a Vanderbilt alumnus—who pledged $5 million.
Vanderbilt began its fundraising campaign for the new campus last year with an initial goal of raising $300 million. While the university did not disclose how much it has raised so far, it announced plans to launch another phase aiming to raise an additional $250 million.
In 2024, local officials from Palm Beach County and West Palm Beach approved gifting seven acres of public land for the campus site. The same decision included approval of a development agreement requiring Vanderbilt to invest at least $300 million in capital expenditures and create 4,500 construction jobs during the project. Within five years of opening operations, Vanderbilt must employ at least 200 full-time staff members, enroll 1,000 students total across its programs, and maintain an annual operating budget of $70 million.
This will not be Vanderbilt’s first satellite graduate campus; last year it opened another location in New York City at a former Episcopal seminary on West 21st Street.
