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Fairfax County's efforts to turn the former penitentiary and other historic prison buildings in Lorton into a modern mixed-use community hit another milestone this month when a new master plan for the property was finalized.

The county officially took ownership of the 2,300-acre former D.C. Department of Corrections facility in 2002 and has since built a secondary school, arts center and golf course there, and has designated much of the site for park uses.

Since 1999, civic groups and county leaders have been developing plans of how best to preserve and reuse the early 20th-century prison buildings, which are on the National Register of Historic Places. The former workhouse was converted into the Lorton Workhouse Arts Center, which opened more than a year ago.

This month, consultant Alexander Company completed work on a master plan to reuse and preserve the penitentiary, reformatory and other associated structures, including some guard towers and the former prison wall. The "adaptive reuse" area is about 80 acres and has 67 existing structures.

County leaders commissioned the master plan after unsuccessful attempts to solicit public-private partnership proposals for the property in 2006. The Alexander Company, which specializes in historic preservation and infill development, also served as the master developer for the reuse of the National Park Seminary property in Silver Spring, Md.

The plan would preserve 93 percent of the historic buildings on the property, now known as Laurel Hill, and calls for demolishing six structures. The plan proposes 171 apartments, 181 townhouses, 50,000 square feet of office space and more than 60,000 square feet of shops and restaurants. The penitentiary buildings would be converted into office uses and the reformatory dormitories would become apartments.

Accomplishing this would cost an estimated $148 million, according to the Alexander Company. After anticipated historic preservation tax credits and estimated profits from the sale of townhouses, there would still be a $9 million to $13 million financing gap, according to the master plan.

"Obviously, one of our concerns ... was to minimize the burden on county taxpayers as much as possible," said Tim Sargeant, a county planning commissioner and chairman of the Laurel Hill Project Advisory Committee.

Last week, the Laurel Hill Project Advisory Committee recommended approval of the master plan, with some caveats. The committee's report says the residential development should not exceed the level proposed in the master plan and suggests that the county take steps to mitigate some development costs -- such as waiving fees and limiting proffers -- because so much of the project's cost is related to historic preservation and utility installation.

The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors is expected to decide on the next steps for the property early next year -- whether to accept the master plan and how to identify a developer partner to proceed with redeveloping the site.

"They will determine whether or not to accept the overall conclusions of the master planning process and move forward," Sargeant said.

The county has already made significant investments in reusing the property, including $8 million to rehabilitate the workhouse property for the arts center, which is now managed by the nonprofit Lorton Arts Foundation, $3.5 million to stabilize buildings and structures on the reformatory and penitentiary property, and about $600,000 a year to provide security and maintenance for the property.