At first glance, the Liberty Crossing Apartment community in Fairfax County, Virginia, looks like any other luxury apartment development. However, if you look closely, you will find remnants of its past and realize this is no ordinary apartment complex. That's because Liberty Crossing was originally a notorious federal penitentiary known as the Lorton Reformatory.
The Lorton Reformatory was built in 1910 on 2,324 acres and served as a federal prison until it was closed in 2001. Most of the inmates at Lorton hailed from nearby Washington, D.C., because it has no penitentiaries to house offenders. People convicted of crimes in the district were sent straight to the federal penitentiary.
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For much of its early life, Lorton was infamous for being where the government held women's suffragists, who were subject to abuse by prison staff on what became known as the “Night of Terror" in 1914. As the years passed and the era of mass incarceration began, Lorton became infamous for another reason. Even by federal standards, Lorton was a notoriously brutal prison where violence and depravity occurred every day until its closure in 2001.
Fairfax County paid $4.2 million to buy the land from the federal government and convert it to civilian use. The county added a golf course, three schools, and an art center, but the question of what to do with the buildings that used to house prisoners remained. Wisconsin-based real estate developer Alexander Co. offered a solution in 2008.
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The Alexander Co. had a history of successful adaptive re-use modifications. It proposed to convert the rest of the campus at Lorton into 164 apartment units. Adaptive reuse conversions can be difficult, but ironically, Lorton had several features that made it a good candidate for a successful conversion to apartment buildings.
"The Lorton Reformatory was a good set of buildings to be converted into residential because it was a reform-era prison. So, unlike most prisons that tend to be large footprint dark buildings without very many windows, these actually had an abundance of light and had quite a bit of character to them, so they laid out very nicely for apartments,"Alexander Co. Development Manager David Vos told CNBC.
That's not to say it was inexpensive. According to CNBC, the Alexander Co. spent $64 million to complete the conversion. When it was over, Liberty Crossing consisted of 84 one-bedroom and 81 two-bedroom apartments, all of which included an in-unit washer-dryer. Rent at Liberty Crossing ranges from $1,372 to $2,700. That's not cheap, but 44 of the apartments at Liberty Crossing are set aside as low-cost, affordable housing units.
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A combination of tax credits, bond financing, and low-income housing tax credits funded the conversion. Liberty Crossing opened in 2017 and achieved full occupancy in a few short months. Vos and the Alexander Co. also took care to pay respect to Lorton's history. They intentionally left some of the old prison-era signs detailing Lorton's rules in place over the converted residential buildings.
"There's a number of reminders as you walk around the campus that remind you of the fact that this used to be a reformatory or prison," Vos said. Even the name Liberty Crest was chosen with a purpose in mind. Vos told CNBC, "The reason we chose Liberty for the name was we really felt that we were liberating these buildings from its more recent dark past."
Liberty Crossing is a perfect example of a positive partnership between real estate developers, the local community, and the government. They all came together to create a project that serves public needs and delivers profit for investors. The reality is that many more innovative projects like this are needed if America is going to solve its housing availability crisis.
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