Denton County recently announced plans for the former Sally Beauty headquarters located in Denton.
Denton County purchased the building at 3001 Colorado Blvd. about one year ago. Now that Sally is moving operations to Plano, the county has announced plans to move its civil court to this building.
“We are hopeful that we’ll be able to start construction next year,” Kevin Falconer, Denton County Precinct 2 commissioner, said.
Because Denton County is rapidly growing, the county government has to expand to keep up. Falconer said the county approved a request for another district court a couple of years ago but that there was not enough room for this expansion.
“We try to keep it as efficient as possible in our county government,” Falconer said. “But we have to grow as well.”
The county considered a few options including constructing an entirely new building and adding an expansion to an existing county building. Both of these options would have been significantly more expensive.
Instead, they decided to purchase a separate building. Sally Beauty is still working out of that building as it prepares to transition to new offices, which gives the county time to prepare to work on the building.
“We think it was a really strategic way to solve this problem,” Falconer said.
He said that because of COVID-19, many offices use hybrid work schedules and therefore do not always need a large office building.
“Even if it weren’t for the courts building issue, we have so much need for office space.” Falconer said. “Because much of what we do is not something we can do in a virtual manner.”
Falconer said that district courts are typically multi-jurisdictional, meaning they include both civil and criminal courts. But, to account for space, the county decided to separate its civil and criminal courts.
Although this project is a group effort, Falconer is particularly passionate about it because of his experience as an architect.
“We want to provide top notch service whether it’s our passport office, vehicle registrations or the courts,” he said. “I think we’re going to be able to do that, but do it in a quicker and, quite frankly, more cost-effective way.”