Va. Tech Innovation Campus building opening delayed

The opening of the first academic building on Virginia Tech’s Innovation Campus has been delayed to spring 2025, the university announced Thursday.

Virginia Tech started construction on the first academic building of the $1 billion campus in Alexandria in September 2021 and had planned to open the $302 million building this August. The delay on the 300,000-square-foot, 11-story building is due to construction supply chain issues, according to a university news release. Bethesda, Maryland-based JBG Smith Properties is the building developer.

Virginia Tech opened the Innovation Campus headquarters on the ground floor of 3000 Potomac Ave. in 2021, adjacent to the site of the future 3.5-acre campus. It houses executive offices and a café-style area.

Graduate students will continue to attend Innovation Campus classes at Virginia Tech’s Northern Virginia Center in Falls Church. Classes in the center started in fall 2020. Currently, the university has 376 computer science and computer engineering master’s degree students based in the Washington, D.C. area.

The Innovation Campus is part of Virginia’s Tech Talent Investment Program, which aims to produce 31,000 in-demand computer science and related graduates in the next two decades. At its full buildout, the Innovation Campus will produce about 500 master’s program graduates and 50 doctoral candidates annually.

“Our vision remains unchanged. We are building a community perfectly positioned to connect talented students with Northern Virginia’s growing tech ecosystem,” Lance Collins, vice president and executive director of the Innovation Campus, said in a statement.

The Innovation Campus is part of a developing area. Anchored by the campus, the Potomac Yard-VT station opened in May 2023. In December 2023, Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced that the Washington Capitals and Washington Wizards are planning to move to Alexandria in a $2 billion deal that would create a 9 million-square-foot entertainment complex in Alexandria. In nearby Arlington County, Amazon.com’s $2.5 billion HQ2 began a phased opening in June 2023.