Amazon Snaps Up George Washington University Campus in Virginia’s Data Center Alley for $427 Million

George Washington University has sold its Virginia campus to Amazon Web Services, a $427 million deal in the heart of Northern Virginia's Data Center Alley.

The sale price of the roughly 122-acre Ashburn campus comes to $3.5 million per acre.

The sale is "part of a broader strategy to strengthen GW’s long-term financial health and to invest more deeply in our academic mission and community," GW President Ellen Granberg said in a statement.

"As stewards of the university’s mission, we must continually assess how best to use our resources in service of our community and future generations of GW Revolutionaries," Granberg said. "This includes our real estate portfolio, a critical asset that supports our academic mission, the students, faculty, and staff who advance it, and the university’s long-term financial strength."

The university has the option to keep programs there for another five years. GW is based in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood of Washington, DC, about 25 miles away.

The land sits in the middle of one of the nation's strongest concentrations of data centers. However, some parts of the state, such as Henrico County near Richmond, have used those investments to fund housing and support first-time homebuyers.

Amazon didn't immediately say what it plans to do with the land.

Past and future for Data Center Alley

Northern Virginia real estate developer Robert Smith donated the first 50 acres of the land to open the campus in 1991. GW gradually expanded through additional land purchases, spending $1.5 million in 2004, $16.6 million in 2008, and $6.8 million in 2012, according to Loudoun County property records.

Today, it's home to about 20 academic programs and labs. But the university has been dealing with a budget shortfall. Last year, it announced a hiring freeze and spending cuts. It cited cuts in federal government research spending, economic instability, and enrollment changes.

With that in mind, the university "had to take seriously the opportunity to realize the extraordinary benefits a sale at this time would yield," Granberg said. Some of the proceeds will fund a new endowment, and some could be used for faculty and staff bonuses.

In the meantime, Loudoun County is the epicenter of Northern Virginia's data center boom. About 3,500 technology companies call the area home. The county boasts 53.3 million square feet of data centers up and running or under development. And they support 15,000 jobs and bring in $663 million in tax revenues, county information shows.

The county boasts that there hasn't been a single day in the past 14 years without data center construction.

The median value of owner-occupied homes in Loudoun County sits at $743,000, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.