Ten Years On, GW Puts Finishing Touches on Palisades Campus

When George Washington University (GW) acquired the Mount Vernon College for Women in Northwest’s Palisades neighborhood in 1999, they had planned for an extensive build-out of the 134-year-old former seminary that would include 320,000 square feet of new academic and dormitory buildings.

A decade later, GW's satellite campus is co-ed for the first time in its history, but has achieved less than half of the approved additions once intended for the 26-acre campus. Now, with the tenth anniversary of Mount Vernon's incorporation into the University approaching, GW officials have teamed with EE & K Architects to realize the remaining 167,000 square feet of new development for the college at Foxhall Road and Whitehaven Parkway, NW.


The development team – which also includes EDAW, AECOM and VIKA Capitol, LLC – has been holding monthly community meetings to outline their plans for a 2010 Mount Vernon Campus Plan. At present, there are three differently oriented project plans on the table - all of which, however, would achieve the same result: four new academic buildings, ranging from 25,000 to 45,000 square feet; a new 50,000 square foot, 100-bed residential complex; and, lastly, a new three-story gym/sports and recreation center. According to University reps, the idea is to concentrate the new development towards the center of the campus, thereby giving it the bucolic college green feel so rarely afforded to urban universities, and behind Mount Vernon’s blink-and-you’ll-miss-it front gate on Whitehaven Parkway.

In order to make way for this slew of new building projects, some of the institution’s 70s-era academic and residential will be razed, in order to free up campus space. Mount Vernon’s Cole Residence Hall, Gatehouse Building, the Webb and Acheson academic buildings, along with a portion of the Ames academic building, are slated for demolition once a final plan is put together.
Upcoming meetings will adhere to a strict outline of community concerns regarding the project. On July 9th, the development team will present their findings on noise, lighting and population counts, to be followed on August 13th by a presentation on landscaping, storm water management and the green building techniques to be employed in the new facilities. The final scheduled meeting is to be held on September 10th, whereupon a final development scheme will be presented to locals and students alike. All meetings are held at 7:30 pm in the Mount Vernon Campus’ Webb Building.

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