Georgetown University in D.C. looking to expand east

Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. has run out of space on its historic hilltop campus in the neighborhood that shares its notable name. Leaders at the university are charting the school’s expansion to emerging neighborhoods to the east in Mount Vernon Square and possibly Capitol Hill or Anacostia. The university’s expansion efforts have long faced reluctant neighborhood opposition, but a plan approved earlier this week to permit modest updates to the campus was acknowledged that the school’s only realistic options for growth are well beyond the property that Roman Catholic Bishop John Carroll acquired in 1789.

Officials from Georgetown’s School of Continuing Studies finalized a deal on Thursday to move that school and its more than 1,100 students to a 91,000-square-foot location in Mount Vernon Square, which will be named Georgetown Downtown. The university received bids from development companies interested in assisting the school to acquire and develop a new campus as much as 100 acres, which is potentially as large as its 104-acre main campus. The other top sites on the university’s list are the eastern end of Capitol Hill and Poplar Point, a waterfront parcel abutting Anacostia.