Behind Vanderbilt University's 'Insatiable' National Expansion Plan

As Ivy League universities have been forced to defend themselves from cuts and lawsuits from the Trump administration, the Harvard of the South is preparing to conquer territories beyond its borders for the first time.

Vanderbilt University, founded in 1873, hired its inaugural vice chancellor of real estate this month as it begins to build out new campuses in New York City and South Florida and searches for another satellite location in San Francisco.

It’s in an effort to bring the pride of Nashville into the 21st century, Vanderbilt’s Ralph Owen Dean and professor of marketing Tom Steenburgh told Bisnow in an interview. 

“It's an insatiable desire to do more of what we think that we're put on this earth to do,” Steenburgh said. “The audacious nature of it — it's big. It's really, really big, and we're ambitious in that way. I think the other thing about it is that we're not afraid. If something's not working out, we won't do it. We have enough projects in the works at any one point in time.”

Last month, Vanderbilt got approval for a 99-year lease to take over the campus of General Theological Seminary in Manhattan. It is also designing a $520M satellite campus in West Palm Beach, Florida, and kicking off a 40-acre expansion of its Nashville campus to boot. 

The aggressive push for growth is coming as funding sources for many premier universities are under attack.

President Donald Trump’s administration has targeted some of the nation’s largest private schools, including Columbia University and Harvard University, threatening to strip schools of accreditations and tax exemptions and pull back science and research grants. More than 2,400 grants had been terminated as of Sept. 3, according to Grant Witness.

A shrinking college-age population has helped lead to the closure of at least 84 public or nonprofit colleges since 2020, according to Best Colleges. That number is expected to increase over the next five years.

Vanderbilt, a top 20 private university, hasn't been unscathed. In June, the Vanderbilt University Medical Center announced it expects to lay off 650 employees, or 2% of its research and support workforce. It also announced its plans to cut operating costs by $300M in the teaching and trauma care hospital system as a result of grant and other funding cuts made by the Trump administration, Tennessee Lookout reported.

The political environment has made it “very” common for universities to pause real estate projects, said David Carlos, JLL head of nonprofit education and government practice in the Tri-State Area.

But Vanderbilt is pressing ahead with its aggressive expansion beyond its 8M SF, 340-acre Nashville campus that houses more than 9,000 graduate and undergraduate students.

“They're in a red state, and that may be helpful to them, because it seems, so far, that they’re going after the institutions in the more blue states,” said David Lebenstein, the New York-based head of Cushman & Wakefield's not-for-profit advisory group.

To manage it, the school named Carl Rodrigues as its first vice chancellor for real estate facilities and development in July.

Rodrigues — who previously led Harvard University’s development arm, the Harvard Allston Land Co. — started working part time at Vanderbilt this month and plans to start full time in November.

“It’s an honor to step into this role and work collaboratively with my new colleagues in Nashville to steward Vanderbilt’s outstanding facilities and campuses in Nashville, West Palm Beach, and New York City,” Rodrigues said this month in a LinkedIn post announcing his new role.

Vanderbilt declined to make Rodrigues available for an interview.

The institution began exploring West Palm Beach in April 2024, when billionaire developer and Related Ross CEO Stephen Ross launched a campaign to raise $300M for a Vanderbilt campus.

Vanderbilt was granted 5 acres of county-owned land to build a campus with 300K SF of classrooms, student housing and parking for 1,000 students looking to pursue graduate degrees in business, data science and artificial intelligence.

The school has secured $77M to build the campus, $50M of which came directly from Ross.

Ross, who has pledged $10B to turn West Palm into the “Wall Street of the South,” is building an ecosystem of luxury office towers for hedge funds and tech firms, moving forward on luxury condominiums and backing K-12 private schools.

Vanderbilt's campus is an important part of that vision, Vanderbilt alumnus and Related Ross Executive Vice President Jordan Rathlev told Bisnow. Steenburgh said the school was attracted to the city's growth story.

“Part of our job is to attract jobs and attract talent together, and part of that is introducing some of the great brands around the world, and Vanderbilt happens to be one of those,” Rathlev said. “The mission was to go find one of the top universities in the country that will help us seed a local talent force that will fill the jobs of companies coming down here.”

The school expects to employ more than 1,300 people once the campus is up and running, according to a 2024 report by TXP Inc. on Vanderbilt’s potential economic impact in West Palm Beach provided to Bisnow by the school.

Vanderbilt could generate more than $7B in total economic activity over the next 25 years, according to the report.

“This will be a generational employer, an engine of commerce each year and every year,” said John Boyd Jr., the CEO of Boca Raton-based site selection firm The Boyd Co. “Think about full-time staff. Think about tenured professors and faculty relocating from other parts of the country, students and graduates that will stay in the job market.”

Concurrently, the university is advancing in New York after the state attorney general approved its lease at the 13-building, 150K SF General Theological Seminary in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood. It is taking over the buildings after the school fell on hard times, one of several to close in the city in recent years.

New York is home to the largest community for Vanderbilt outside of Tennessee, with nearly 8,000 alumni and 740 enrolled students from the region. The expansion is a way to embed itself where its graduates are already headed — in investment banking, hedge funds and private capital management, Steenburgh said.

“This would give an opportunity to go to New York, and if you're in the finance industry, that could be amazing,” Steenburgh said. “To have an experience on Wall Street while you're still in school or in [The Museum of Modern Art], that could be great.”

Vanderbilt established a regional administration hub in the city in 2023 for the development of alumni relations, the office of career advancement and education, and the office of enrollment affairs, engaging with alumni and prospective students.

The programs the campus will offer have yet to be finalized, but they will be geared toward serving undergraduate and graduate students in finance, tech, media and the arts. It also may be a way to give Nashville-based students the chance to spend a semester in the world capital of finance, Steenburgh said.

Lebenstein said it is the first time a university will build a new campus in New York City since Cornell University began building the first phase of its 700K SF Cornell Tech campus in 2011.

But Vandy isn't stopping there. In August, the school publicly stated its interest in building a campus in San Francisco.

Steenburgh said the expansion into California is still exploratory, but the school is intrigued with having a foothold in Silicon Valley and the access to startup capital and the technology industry that presents.

“We don't have an illusion that everything's going to take place,” Steenburgh said. “We'll continue to explore, and the ones that have legs we will pour our full energy into, and the ones that aren't quite all there, we’ll pull back the reins on and not go for. But I think you really need to be an active explorer of opportunity to do something special. We're just actively searching.”