Two Northern Virginia Community College Campuses in Prince William County will be renovated.
At the college’s Woodbridge campus, renovations will begin on the Seefeldt Building, a 144,000-square-foot center that opened in 1972 and has served as the campus’s central building, housing administration, classrooms, counseling services, and theater.
Work on the $54 million renovation will begin this semester as faculty and staff begin to pack up and relocate to temporary space on campus. Later this year, crews will begin the work that will take between 18 and 24 months to complete.
Contractors will relocate the building’s front entrance to face College Drive, the main thoroughfare, and concentrate all of the student services offices — counseling, financial aid, parking permits — in one place.
Biology labs will be upgraded, as will the Lakeside Theater, which fronts the small body of water on the campus, giving it more space for more significant performances.
The college delayed the renovation, which had been planned since before the pandemic. In 2013, the college opened a second academic building which had been planned when the college opened 50 years ago.
In 2016, the college opened a $29 million workforce education center to tailor to help train students to fill IT, healthcare, and construction jobs. Last year, officials announced a plan to build a $5.1 million lab on campus to train students to work in the ever-expanding data center field in the region.
On January 6, 2023, Woodbridge Campus Provost Dr. Richmond Hill spoke to us about the renovation after assuming the top administrator role last year.
“One of the things that I would like for the community to know about Nova and about the Woodbridge campus is that we are here to serve students, and our eyes and our ears are open. And if there is a need that we’re not meeting, we’re open to hearing what those needs are.
I want us, as a college and as a campus, to become student ready. And when I say that, that means that today’s student looks different than the student of five, six, seven years ago. And so while we expect students when they come to college to make some adjustments and to make some changes, we also, as an institution, have to make changes as it relates to our teaching and learning.
As it relates to the services that we offer, the resources that we offer, the hours in which we keep our offices open, the services that we offer virtually, things of that nature. And so I want the community to know that we’re listening and that we want to make sure that students have a top notch experience.
It’s not just about getting them here on the campus and in the door. It’s about making sure that they have a top notch learning experience and that they reach their goal.”
The college’s Manassas Campus, about six miles west of the city, will also see renovations to two of its original buildings that opened in the early 1970s. The renovation will encompass 120,000 square feet in two of the six buildings on campus.
A renovated library, chemistry labs, a new trade center that will train students to work on electric vehicles, and diesel generators for hospitals and data centers will come as part of the renovation.
“The [trade center] will change according to the region’s workforce needs,” said Manassas Campus Provost Dr. Molly Lynch during a Prince William Board of County Supervisors meeting on Tuesday, January 10, 2023.
Prince William County is the only jurisdiction in which the college operates two regular traditional campuses. The college’s first campus at Annandale is in Fairfax County, as is the specialty medical education campus in Springfield.
Northern Virginia Community College is the largest institution of higher learning in Virginia by enrollment. A third of all students enrolled in Virginia Community Colleges attend the college.
