Stanford University has declined its option to purchase a 174-year-old Catholic school in Belmont where it planned to develop a new satellite campus, citing the “changed landscape” of federal funding for research universities.
Stanford entered into a purchase agreement in 2021 to acquire Notre Dame de Namur University’s 46-acre property with plans to add 700K square feet of new development and create a Stanford Belmont campus.
The redevelopment would have demolished most of the structures on the Notre Dame de Namur, which is located about 13 miles north of Stanford’s main campus, with the exception of the Taube Center, the Madison Art Center and the Ralston Mansion, a national landmark built in 1867.
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Stanford said in a statement that it declined the option to proceed with the purchase after evaluating factors that “could not be anticipated” when it made the deal in 2021.
“The landscape for research universities has changed considerably,” it said, adding that it would be difficult to identify and establish academic uses for the planned Belmont campus in the current environment.
Stanford is one of the largest recipients of National Institutes of Health funding, receiving a total of $613M in grants in 2024 from the government agency. For the current year, Stanford thus far has received approval for 169 NIH grants totaling $79M.
A portion of that funding and the approval of additional NIH grants in 2025 is now in jeopardy.
The federal Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the NIH and its $39B research grant program, is moving to slash billions from the agency. On Feb. 7, NIH announced it would cap indirect costs that can be paid for with grant funding at 15%. Traditionally, NIH has negotiated the amount that can be spent on indirect costs with each recipient institution.
A federal lawsuit filed by 22 state attorneys general is seeking an injunction blocking the implementation of the spending limit. The plaintiffs said that if the cuts take effect, institutions that depend on grants would face “catastrophic financial consequences,” including layoffs and furloughs, clinical trial disruptions and financial default.
John Hopkins University, the largest recipient of NIH funding, received $853M in NIH grants in fiscal year 2024, of which $230M was used for indirect costs, according to a report in the Baltimore Business Journal.
A negotiated agreement with NIH allowed John Hopkins to use up to 64% of grant funding for indirect costs last year, according to the university’s website.
After the Trump administration took office in January, NIH froze the consideration of new research grant proposals by suspending public notices for peer-review committees that approve them, a freeze that was partially lifted last week.
According to a Business Journals survey, four universities in California are among the top 10 recipients of NIH grants approved thus far for this year. University of California, San Francisco is second on the list with $90.5M across 203 grants; UCLA is third, with $89.4M across 127 grants; UC San Diego is ninth, with $79.2M across 153 grants; and Stanford is 10th.
In 2023, UC San Francisco received a total of $789M in NIH grants and UCLA received $580M, Forbes reported.
NIH research grants are a primary source of funding for biotech and life science startups as well as research universities.
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