The University is considering purchasing another building on the Virginia campus in an effort to shift more administrative offices out of Foggy Bottom, a top official said last week.
Executive Vice President and Treasurer Lou Katz said the University is currently looking into purchasing a building on GW’s Ashburn, Va. campus to continue the multi-year process of moving a majority of the University’s administrative offices out of the University’s valuable space in Foggy Bottom. Already, the University has moved both the tax and financial aid offices out of Foggy Bottom and onto the Virginia campus.
The University currently owns four buildings on the campus. Last year, the University purchased a 70,000 square-foot, $16.6 million facility, increasing the size of the campus by 25 percent. Other large buildings located in the area include Heckler and Koch, a German defense contractor, and a branch of Strayer University, a private for-profit university.
“We will continue to move more of the administrative functions out of Foggy Bottom and onto the Virginia campus,” Katz said. “It also allows us more freedom for how we move people around campus. The goal of this is to create more research space, more educational space and more administrative space out there.”
Craig Linebaugh, chief academic operating officer at the Virginia campus, said he is working with Katz’s office on developing a plan to acquire more real estate on the campus.
“We are working on a plan for the continuing development of the academic enterprise at the campus and a plan for facilities and amenities is under development by the Office of the Executive Vice President and Treasurer,” Linebaugh said in an e-mail.
Katz said the University is not certain it will purchase the building, saying that GW is gathering additional information on the property before they make any recommendation to the Board of Trustees. The board must approve all financial decisions the University makes.
“The building that we are currently looking at will be office space only,” Katz said. “But we are looking at how we would configure the space that we have currently on the Virginia campus.”
