"Virginia’s biggest undergraduate university reached a milestone Tuesday in its effort to establish a tech-focused graduate campus in northern Virginia.

Virginia Tech officials raised a steel beam to the 11th floor of a 300,000-square-foot (30,000-square-meter) building in Alexandria that will anchor the school’s new Innovation Campus.

The university expects the building to open in time for the fall semester in 2024. Eventually, three buildings totaling 600,000 square feet (55,000 square meters) are expected to be completed by 2030 at a cost of more than $1 billion. The campus will serve more than 750 graduate students, mostly in computer science and engineering programs," reports AP News. 

Photo: Virginia Tech's Liza Morris talks about building materials at the Alexandria site. (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post)