Utraque duo: Will Georgetown’s campus soon stretch across the Potomac?
Posted by: Sam Buckley in News, Vox Populi, tags: 2010 Campus Plan, CHUDs, Expansion, VirginiaIt looks like opponents of Georgetown’s outward expansion who seek to avoid the University becoming a campus of C.H.U.Ds may instead encourage GU to look across the Potomac for answers to its space problems.
A recent WaPo article titled “With Georgetown University fast running out of room, Virginia beckons” provocatively lays out the argument that the University will ultimately be forced to look outside of D.C. if it wishes to expand in the future. The article cites the University’s continued conflict with ANC2E along with our promise to build 250 new beds on-campus or outside of zip code 20007 as indicators that future expansion within the neighborhood will prove difficult.
Currently, Georgetown is committed to building both 250 new undergraduate beds and a new, 1000-student satellite campus for continuing studies students. At the moment, the only potential site publicly identified for new undergraduate housing is the current Leavey Center Hotel, and University spokesperson Rachel Pugh confirmed in an email that while “locations throughout the D.C. metro area are being considered,” the University has not yet determined its space needs for the new satellite campus.
The Post notes that Georgetown already has a history of development in Arlington, having attempted to generate interest in the development of the Virginia Suites Hotel along with the current Archstone Rosslyn as potential student dorms. Currently, the University operates the Center for Continuing and Professional Education in Arlington, which opened in 2004.
h/t: WaPo. Check out a map of Georgetown’s past expansion efforts in Virginia after the jump.
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Wow, hmm, that’s unfortunate. I’d hate to live in a dorm in Rosslyn. God, that would be such a different college experience. I think, if they absolutely must look outside Georgetown, better to look in Dupont or the West End.
be ok with dupont. Close to internships, nice spot. We would run the risk of NYUization. We could wake up in a world in which Dispatch is replaced with Pavement, critter shorts with cutoff jeans, and sfs pretension for pomo hipster.
They really should have bought the mount vernon campus on foxhall when they had a chance.
The thing is, the battles with ANC2E et. al. happen in 10-year cycles, and 10 years is a long time. When the last campus plan battle was being fought, there was no Southwest Quad, no Davis Performing Arts Center, no Hariri Building, no Science Center, no MSF… errr strike that last one, there’s still no real MSF…
Anyway, as Howard Federoff laid out in a letter awhile back, the current long term calculus is that MedStar will sell the hospital and the Medical School will move off of main campus, presumably out to wherever MedStar builds a nice new big medical campus along the lines of what Inova has done in Virginia. In other words, probably in the middle of some field deep in suburbia. Meanwhile, Main Campus will slowly but surely take over the existing Medical Center for its own use.
In the interim, certain autonomous and auxiliary units can expect to find themselves scattered across town. The School of Continuing Studies will be fully moved off campus, GPPI might end up somewhere closer to the action downtown, perhaps some of the grad programs like CCT. NYUization is less of an issue for grad programs, especially those whose students are primarily part-time.
All of this will take many years, but as the list above shows, circumstances can change quite a bit in a single decade.
They had a chance at Visitation’s campus a while back. They declined, to keep Georgetown’s “small school” feel.
@Dizzy:
My understanding is that the hospital was being relocated — but would still be on campus. Can anyone confirm? My knowledge of trivial details only extends to GUSA, I’m afraid.
According to the statement filed in the record with the DC Zoning Commission on June 15, the proposed 500,000 square foot hospital originally included in the 2010-2020 Campus Plan has been removed from consideration. The exhibit number is 273. It can be accessed by going to http://app.dcoz.dc.gov/content/search/Search.aspx and searching for case 10-32.
[...] the confusingly aliased ieedd foretells of the dangers inherent in spreading Georgetown’s campus to an area where there [...]
I’ve always heard that was due to lack of financial resources at the time? Either way, probably one of the biggest mistakes Georgetown has made.
Jane, did you have an article or other source for GU’s decline of visitation? I don’t necessarily doubt it, but this is the stuff that rumors are made of.