Image from NLC.

Are you looking to buy a college? After four decades in the Hillandale section of Montgomery County, the National Labor College announced that they will sell its campus this summer, reports the Gazette.

The college, located at New Hampshire Avenue and the Beltway, was previously a Catholic school before the AFL-CIO bought the property in 1974, seeking a permanent place to educate union workers. With just 1,300 students, all of whom can now study online, the college no longer needs a large campus and plans to relocate to an office building somewhere in the area.

The National Labor College leaves behind a 47 acre campus with four residence halls, two classroom buildings, a library, an auditorium and the recently-built Lane Kirkland Conference Center, all of which surround a small quad.

There’s also what appears to be a basketball court and baseball diamond. (In case you’re as unfamiliar with the site as I was, the campus does not include Holly Hall, a retirement community whose red-brick buildings make it look like part of the college.)

National Labor College. Aerial photo from Bing Maps.

What can one do with a former college? Naturally, the campus would lend itself to another school, but we shouldn’t be limited by that. The campus might be a nice place for a security-minded government tenant to locate, but judging from the stalled progress at St. Elizabeth’s in the District, it’s unlikely that any federal agencies will be poking around here.

Besides, we probably don’t want that anyway. When the Food and Drug Administration relocated their headquarters to the former Naval Ordnance Laboratory farther up New Hampshire Avenue, there was an opportunity to use its 710-acre property for a mix of uses, including retail, housing or parkland.

But neighbors in Hillandale “[were] going to have none of that,” as one resident told the Washington Post. Instead, we got an isolated office campus whose 7,000 workers barely venture out for lunch, much to the chagrin of local restaurants.

The National Labor College land is far too valuable to make that mistake again. It’s next to the Beltway and just one exit away from I-95. It’s also part of the White Oak Science Gateway, which is what county planners call the research and development center they’d like to create in the area. There are a lot of possibilities here, and we shouldn’t be so quick to shut them off.

It’s not every day that 47 acres suddenly appears in the middle of an established community. This is a great opportunity and we’d do well to seize it.

Dan Reed (they/them) is Greater Greater Washington’s regional policy director, focused on housing and land use policy in Maryland and Northern Virginia. For a decade prior, Dan was a transportation planner working with communities all over North America to make their streets safer, enjoyable, and equitable. Their writing has appeared in publications including Washingtonian, CityLab, and Shelterforce, as well as Just Up The Pike, a neighborhood blog founded in 2006. Dan lives in Silver Spring with Drizzy, the goodest boy ever.