Dubbed a billionaires playground and Wall Street South Palm Beach, Florida, may not be the first location to come to mind when considering where to locate a college campus. The South Florida locale has long been a warm-weather haven for famed residents, including Serena Williams, President Donald Trump, and Sylvester Stallone, and has recently become a hub for development, as banks and tech companies open offices there. Vanderbilt University has been understandably eying the region to expand its educational footprint and this week the Tennessee-based school shared renderings from Elkus Manfredi Architects that envision what a campus in Palm Beach could look like. Vanderbilt has indicated it plans to open a campus to house graduate-level business programs and facilities to study data and computer science and AI in Florida. In October, the university reached a deal with Palm Beach County Commission that provided five acres of county-owned land, on top of two already approved, city-owned acres, for the campus site. Vanderbilt said it is looking to open a campus in South Florida, to complement the regions booming financial and tech sectors.Native plantings are planned for the campus to create a sense of place while also harkening to the Nashville campus. (Elkus Manfredi Architects)John Boyd Jr., of The Boyd Company, a site-selection firm, told the Nashville Post in an interview about the project: A VU campus will help to open the floodgates for new scholarships, gifts to the school and other fundraising activities. He added, Palm Beach is home to some 60 billionaires, and nearly a quarter of Vanderbilt students come from families in the top 1 percent of earners. That makes Vanderbilt one of the wealthiest schools in the nation. Vanderbilt and Palm Beach are a perfect fit.The connection to place and outdoors takes root inside as well. (Elkus Manfredi Architects)Not unlike Vanderbilts main campus in Nashville, the Palm Beach outpost will be tree-filled, with a strong connection to the outdoors. David Manfredi, CEO and founding principal of Elkus Manfredi Architects, described the project as a living laboratory of South Florida landscape. Plantings native to the region will form an arboretum of sorts, similar to the historic one on Vanderbilts main campus, where over 6,000 trees and shrubs are planted. The arboretummirroring the arboretum on our Nashville campussymbolizes our commitment to operate as One Vanderbilt, and our never-ending collective effort to dare to grow, Vanderbilt Chancellor Daniel Diermeier added.A campus in Palm Beach locates students in an area with financial- and tech-sector growth. (Elkus Manfredi Architects)Native species envisioned for the Palm Beach campus include slash pines, Cherokee Beans, and, of course, sabal palms. Sea grape, gumbo limbo, and buttonbush will also grant a sense of place that is rooted in Florida identity. Other plans for Vanderbilts Palm Beach campus include the new Executive Education & Lifelong Learning Building, envisioned with a mass timber structure. Facilities across the campus are depicted in renderings with rooftop photovoltaic panels. Given the citys proximity to water, coastal resiliency is also top of mind for the design of the campus, which will comply with floodplain regulations and take into account stormwater mitigation. In addition to classrooms, space for entrepreneurial work and innovation could also take hold.A classroom equipped for distance learning. (Elkus Manfredi Architects)Vanderbilts Board of Trust has set a fundraising goal of $300 million to realize the Palm Beach campus, estimated to cost a total of $520 million. The university also plans to expand its educational offerings to New York City. This past fall it leased a historic campus in Chelsea, owned by The General Theological Seminary.