Va. Tech Innovation Campus opens first academic building

The first academic building of Virginia Tech’s Innovation Campus in Alexandria opened to students Tuesday as classes commenced.

Virginia Tech started construction on the first academic building of the $1 billion campus in September 2021 and had planned to open the $302 million building in August 2024, but supply chain issues delayed the opening of the 300,000-square-foot, 11-story building.

Academic Building One has instruction, research, office and support spaces for graduate computer science and computer engineering programs. The building includes research and testing labs and maker spaces.

“This is an incredible moment for this campus,” said Lance Collins, vice president and executive director of the Innovation Campus, “because for the first time, we’re inviting all of our students onto the campus, so now the faculty, the staff and the students are all here, classes are underway, and we are, for the first time, bringing the entire full force of the Innovation Campus together.”

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

Plans for the Innovation Campus include two more buildings, each about 150,000 square feet.

From fall 2020 until December 2024, graduate students attended classes at Virginia Tech’s Northern Virginia Center in Falls Church, which closed in December 2024 and is set to become part of a mixed-use district including the university’s Coalition for Smart Construction. The coalition will occupy 40,000 square feet on the ground floor of Hitt Contracting’s new headquarters under construction.

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.

The campus is “expanding the footprint of Virginia Tech in this region, and this is just such an important region,” Collins said, citing the proximity of the federal government and the presence of major tech companies and defense contractors.

“For so many reasons, it’s really important that the tech ecosystem here really be at the top, and so we believe we’re part of that, just in terms of growing the tech talent that will be feeding that tech ecosystem,” he added.

The Tech Talent Investment Program helped the region attract e-tailer Amazon.com’s multibillion-dollar HQ2, its East Coast headquarters. Located in Arlington County, the first phase of HQ2, Metropolitan Park, opened in June 2023, although Amazon announced in March 2023 it was delaying construction on the second phase, PenPlace. Clark Construction plans to begin installing utilities for PenPlace, though, in March, according to Washington Business Journal.

Also nearby, the Potomac Yard-VT metro station opened in May 2023.