'Georgetown Downtown' is Official

"Georgetown Downtown" is the name given to the 91,000-square-foot space Georgetown University officially inked a deal on to house its growing School of Continuing Studies, according to a University announcement Thursday.

The new location will be home to some 1,100 students and is scheduled to open in 2013.

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"This location puts SCS in the heart of the city, expands the university’s 'Georgetown Downtown' presence, with our Law Center campus just eight blocks away, and deepens our commitment to expanding the educational opportunities offered by the university beyond our historic main campus," wrote University President John DeGioia in an email to students sent Thursday night.

Just last week , striking an agreement with neighbors and promising to seek out more space beyond the existing 104-acre campus in upper Northwest DC.

“They’ve never really considered, until now, a major full-service, satellite campus,” Advisory Neighborhood Commission Chair Ron Lewis said to The Washington Post about the new lease. “And during discussions on the campus plan, they came to this realization that their main campus is full.”

The Washington Post reports that the downtown campus is just the first step in the University's efforts to locate it's next 100 acres:

"Georgetown issued a 12-page request-for-proposals recently seeking private-sector development partners who can evaluate the university’s existing campus and begin evaluating large blocks of land in the area, specifically Hill East, a 50-acre site next to RFK Stadium, Poplar Point, a 110-acre swath of parkland in Ward 8, and 'two additional to-be-identified parcels,' according to the document."

Georgetown, including the MedStar hospital, occupies just more than 100 acres in the 20007 Zip Code. In the campus plan agreement documents, Georgetown set the goal of identifying and developing its "next 100 acres." The RFP is the first public step of that search.

As Harriet Tregoning, DC director of planning, told the Post, “Georgetown is taking a longer and much more strategic view of their future."