Inside a $64 Million Prison-to-Apartments Conversion
David Vos, a development project manager at the Alexander Company, walks CNBC Make It through Liberty, a $64 million conversion of the old Lorton Reformatory prison in Virginia into 165 apartments. It’s a real estate story, but it’s really a story about winning people over: neighbors who weren’t sure they wanted to live somewhere with a dark history, and lenders and investors who had real, specific reservations about the deal before they’d sign off on it.
This clip covers the financing stretch of that story, the part where Vos has to explain, calmly and specifically, what the concerns were and how the team addressed each one. It’s a template you’ll recognize from any funding pitch or stakeholder update in English: name the objection precisely, then show exactly how it got resolved, using phrases like “clear those hurdles” and “get an investor on board” that carry real weight in business conversations far outside real estate.
What do you want to do today?
Watch the clip.
Type what you hear.
Now say it with him.
Five situations. Which phrase fits?
Cultural Notes
Acknowledge the criticism first. Then say whose view is coming next.
Later in the full video, Vos describes people who focused on the prison’s history of mistreatment, then says, “But from our standpoint, we really felt that it’s important to preserve history.” The phrase does a specific job: it flags that what follows is the speaker’s own organization’s position, not a claim about what’s objectively true or what everyone believes. That distinction matters. Saying “from our standpoint” before your view signals you know other views exist and you’re not dismissing them, you’re just telling people whose opinion this next sentence represents. It’s standard in press statements, board updates, and any moment where you need to respond to criticism without sounding like you’re arguing that the criticism is wrong.
A track-and-field image that lives permanently in office vocabulary.
In the clip, Vos lists three separate lender concerns, no mass transit nearby, mixed income housing, uncertain market rate rents, then closes with “eventually we were able to clear those hurdles.” A hurdle is literally a barrier a runner jumps over mid-race, but in business speech it just means an obstacle you get past, one at a time, on the way to a goal. Nobody picturing an actual track when they say it. It works well specifically when there were multiple distinct problems, not one big one, which is why it fits Vos’s list of three separate lender concerns so naturally. It’s comfortable in almost any register, a quick team update, a formal investor letter, a casual conversation.
The adverb is doing the real work in that sentence.
Vos uses this pairing twice in the full video: “those apartments were very warmly received,” and later, “the community has very warmly embraced the Liberty project.” Drop the word “warmly” and both sentences still work, “the apartments were received,” “the community embraced the project,” but they turn flat and almost bureaucratic. “Warmly” is what tells the listener this wasn’t just tolerated or approved on paper, people were truly glad about it. It pairs naturally with reception verbs like received, welcomed, and embraced, and it’s safe in almost any professional context, a press release, an investor update, a casual recap to a colleague, anywhere you want to convey real enthusiasm rather than mere acceptance.