Dan River Falls

Address: 420 Memorial Drive, Danville

Project Type: Public-private partnership

Project Size: 550,000 square feet

Project Cost: $110 million

Owner: The Alexander Co.; Danville Industrial Development Authority

Contractors: Rehab Builders/JE Burton Construction

Architect: The Alexander Co.

Interior Designer: The Alexander Co.

Engineers: Timmons Group (civil); Stantec (environmental); Rehab Engineering (mechanical)

The Dan River textile mill once employed generations of Danville families. When the industry collapsed, it took roughly 14,000 jobs with it, leaving the hulking White Mill as a monument to what had been lost — fenced off, deteriorating and vacant for years. What makes Dan River Falls remarkable is not merely that the mill has been transformed, but how — through a public-private partnership structure that its principals describe as a new template for large-scale historic redevelopment.

The Alexander Co., a Wisconsin-based adaptive reuse developer, partnered with the Danville Industrial Development Authority in a dual management structure that divided responsibility cleanly: Alexander led the residential component, while the city and its partners managed commercial and public-facing elements. The arrangement required constant alignment across separate financing mechanisms, multiple limited liability companies, cross-state contractors operating under different procurement rules, and a layered compliance structure built to secure more than $110 million in total investment.

The 550,000-square-foot former mill’s original concrete structure and architectural character were preserved throughout, with the building retrofitted for residential apartments, office space and ground-floor restaurants and retail. State and federal historic tax credits were central to the financing structure, alongside environmental assessments conducted by Stantec that cleared the site of hazardous materials. The city’s Riverwalk Trail will be extended along the property, and an outdoor dog park adds to the public amenity offering.

A site that defined Southern Virginia’s industrial identity for generations has been returned to serve people in the city it shaped, this time as a destination rather than a workplace, and as evidence that the region’s most challenging properties can become catalysts for renewed civic pride.