by Brianna Crandall — September 5, 2016 — Venture builder 22 Capital Partners, the Center for Innovative Technology, and the George Washington University recently announced a new partnership that will lead development of an ecosystem to create “smart city” technology, education and innovation in Virginia, paving the way for a new kind of living and working environment. The project team was announced shortly thereafter.
Gramercy District is said to be the first “smart city” in the region and one of the first in the country. The goal is to merge technology with real estate to deliver unique experiences and enhance quality of life.
Gramercy District will create an environment that continuously adapts to meet the needs of business partners and guests who are working, living, shopping and playing in the smart city. The vision of the group creating Gramercy District is to craft a sustainable, repeatable, economically viable model for other cities to adopt the new standard of living and working.
The partnership was created to facilitate access to and use of a working smart city development that will connect areas along the Washington, DC, and Washington Dulles International Airport corridor. It will form a living environment built around the needs of entrepreneurs to envision the future and bring smart city education and innovations to market. New technology will be embodied in the 22 CityLink Platform, with the first deployment taking place at the Gramercy District development at the new Silver Line Ashburn Metro Station.
The partnership exemplifies a smart city public-private partnership. The Center for Innovative Technology (CIT) is both an authority on technology in the Commonwealth as well as the center of leading-edge innovation, entrepreneurial ecosystems, and early-stage investment programs such as the MACH37 Cybersecurity Accelerator, the GAP early-stage investment fund, and the DHS-sponsored EMERGE wearable technology accelerator program.
The George Washington University and its Virginia Science and Technology Campus located in Ashburn brings professional educational innovations in areas such as cybersecurity and data analytics along with entrepreneurial development and technology transfer education through the NSF-funded iCorps program. GW is the lead for the Pennsylvania Avenue 2040 Environmental Sensing Project in Washington, DC, and is part of the MetroLab Network, a national smart cities initiative for municipalities and research institutions to cooperate on key city-wide issues.
This partnership among GW, the Gramercy District and CIT will support new research opportunities and scale up regional job-training activities around the Internet of Things (IoT), cybersecurity, city planning and entrepreneurship. The Gramercy District will be the testbed that provides individuals, businesses and researchers with opportunities for hands-on learning in a smart city environment built to foster the use of new IoT technologies and methods, leading to a repeatable process for smart city experimentation and innovation.
According to an article in the Washington Business Journal, other partners include co-investor Microsoft, which will help build the blueprint for an “intelligent living platform.” This will be aligned with Microsoft’s CityNext program and its focus on neighborhood management, smart buildings, operations management and sustainable land use.
Also on the Gramercy team is Tysons Corner-based Crescent Ridge Capital Partners LLC, a hedge fund manager, which has created an investment vehicle for the project. Additional partnerships will be announced later.
Smart city project team
The Tishman Construction unit of AECOM, a fully integrated global infrastructure firm headquartered in Los Angeles, will team up with TRINITY Group Construction headquartered in Herndon, VA, to implement the vision of a marriage between technology and real estate development to create a smart city of the future.
DVA Architects of Gaithersburg, Maryland, will design the Gramercy District campus, which will include a combination of outdoor plazas and public spaces where consumers can seamlessly interact with all of the businesses. Greystar will provide preconstruction consulting and property management services. These four firms join existing project team members: Bowman Consulting Group, McGuire Woods, PC, and Benton Potter & Murdock, PC.
For more information, visit the 22 CityLink Platform Web site.
