At a Glance

Sector:  Higher Ed / Innovation

Location:  Alexandria, VA

Delivery:  Public-Private Partnership

Scale:  300,000 SF Academic Building & 3.5-Acre Campus

Role: Brian Naumick Provided Early-Stage Real Estate Advisory Services

The Situation 

In November 2018, the Commonwealth of Virginia announced funding for a new Virginia Tech Innovation Campus as part of its successful bid to attract Amazon's second headquarters to Northern Virginia. The state committed more than $700 million to its Tech Talent Investment Program, with the goal of producing thousands of additional technology graduates over the next two decades. Virginia Tech, as the largest university in the state and the highest producer of computer science graduates, was positioned to play a central role.

Before any design or construction could advance, the university faced a set of foundational decisions that would shape everything that followed: where to locate the campus, how to structure the land acquisition, and how to align the physical development with the university's long-term academic and research objectives.

Early Advisory: Aligning Land and Strategy 

Brian Naumick supported Virginia Tech during this critical early phase. Working alongside university leadership, he helped evaluate potential sites across the region, assess development considerations for each option, and align the land strategy with the institution's long-term goals.

The site ultimately selected was in North Potomac Yard, in the Alexandria portion of National Landing, adjacent to what would become the new Potomac Yard-VT Metro Station. The location placed Virginia Tech steps away from Amazon's HQ2, within a growing concentration of technology companies, government agencies, and research institutions, and with a direct Metro connection to the nation's capital.

Brian's involvement centered on bringing clarity and discipline to the pre-development process, helping ensure that the foundational decisions around site selection and land acquisition supported flexibility, future growth, and long-term institutional performance. While the Innovation Campus was not structured as an Edgemoor development and was ultimately delivered under Virginia Tech's own leadership and delivery framework, the early advisory work helped establish the alignment between land, academic vision, and development strategy that the project was built upon.

What Was Built 

Academic Building One, the first phase of the Innovation Campus, opened to students in January 2025 and celebrated its grand opening on February 28, 2025. The 11-story, 300,000 square foot building houses programs in computer science, computer engineering, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and wireless technology. It features 14 classrooms, a two-story drone testing cage, a cyber physical lab, a center for artificial intelligence and data analytics, a K-12 education center, an immersive visualization lab, and the Boeing Auditorium.

The campus is designed to ultimately span multiple buildings across 3.5 acres, graduating approximately 750 master's candidates and hosting hundreds of doctoral students and postdoctoral fellows annually. The total investment in the campus is expected to reach approximately $1 billion, funded through a combination of state appropriations and philanthropic gifts, including $50 million from Boeing and $12.5 million from Northrop Grumman.

A Regional Anchor 

Since opening its doors to the first cohort of students in January 2025, the Virginia Tech Innovation Campus has become a defining anchor for National Landing's evolution into one of the country's leading technology corridors. More than 500 graduate students are now enrolled in programs spanning computer science, computer engineering, and business, working alongside roughly 20 faculty whose research focuses on artificial intelligence and machine learning, quantum information science, wireless and next-generation technology, and intelligent interfaces. The work happening inside the building is already producing the kind of cross-disciplinary research the campus was built to enable, including projects that combine quantum computing, AI, and wireless technology to build synchronized autonomous vehicles capable of navigating complex environments such as disaster zones.

The campus does not stand alone. Together with Amazon's HQ2, the relocated headquarters of Boeing and Raytheon, and George Mason University's nearby Fuse at Mason Square, Virginia Tech sits at the center of a broader ecosystem that is reshaping Northern Virginia's innovation economy. For Virginia Tech itself, the campus triples the university's existing footprint in the region and creates a permanent pipeline between its academic programs and the employers, research institutions, and government agencies concentrated across the Washington, D.C. metro area. At full buildout, the campus is expected to graduate approximately 750 master's and 200 doctoral students annually, contributing meaningfully to Virginia's Tech Talent Investment Program, a statewide effort to produce 32,000 additional computer science and engineering graduates over the next two decades.

The early decisions about where to build, how to structure the land, and how to align the physical campus with the university's academic mission were among the most consequential choices made on this project. Brian Naumick's advisory work during that phase helped ensure those decisions were made with the clarity and long-term perspective the project required.