This project involved the full renovation of a former Lorton Reformatory prison complex. Originally constructed in the early 20th century and commissioned by Theodore Roosevelt, the facility was built by inmates and stood as the benchmark in prison reform for nearly a century.

The Lorton site was abandoned for over a decade, eventually falling into disrepair. Through a cooperative partnership with the state of Virginia, the Alexander company designed a strategy to convert the former prison into a fully developed upscale residential complex.

The Alexander Company chose to repurpose not only the existing buildings but as much of the intact construction as possible. That included nearly 100,000 square feet of concrete floors in over a dozen on site buildings. The architect chose to have those floors repaired and polished in keeping with the post-modern residential style that is common in today's architecture and construction.

While fantastic in concept, achieving a residential grade polished floor system was very challenging based on a number of predetermined conditions. The original concrete had been poured and re-poured haphazardly for nearly 100 years. The inmates had placed the concrete in batches from as small as a bucket to as large as a wagon without any mechanical means nor any advanced concrete tools or knowledge. These unique demands required extensive partnering and communication between the construction team in establishing and completing individual repairs in hundreds of rooms.

The unique floor also called for extensive communication with the diamond manufacturer as the concrete took every possible facet of different diamond tooling sometimes within a given building and often within each room. Through extensive experience and communication with a fantastic team, the polished contractor was able to turn the Laurel Hill project into a shining example of adaptive reuse in the polished floor industry.