Douglas County Treasurer’s Satellite Office moving from south to west Lawrence, expected to open next year

photo by: Matt Resnick/Journal-World

The Douglas County Treasurer’s Satellite Office is expected to move to this site at 2601 W. Sixth St. in west Lawrence once renovations are complete.

The Douglas County Treasurer’s Satellite Office in south Lawrence is set to move to a larger, more customer-friendly location in west Lawrence, but it’s unlikely to open before early next year.

The satellite office that has been at 2000 W. 31st St. for about eight years is “completely maxed out on space right now,” Douglas County Treasurer Adam Rains told the Journal-World. The new space at 2601 W. Sixth St. — currently partially occupied by Waddell & Reed, a financial planning firm — is about double the size of the 2,500-square-foot office on 31st Street.

The new location will have more parking and a larger waiting area for customers looking to renew their license tags and conduct other business with the county, Rains said. The larger space will also allow the county to add more staff if needed and to more evenly distribute staff among the main treasurer’s office in the Douglas County Courthouse and the satellite locations in Lawrence and Baldwin City.

On May 3, Douglas County commissioners authorized the purchase and remodel of the building on West Sixth Street. The total price is about $1.7 million, which includes $650,000 in American Rescue Plan Act funds and $1.05 million in Capital Improvement Plan contingency funds.

The county cannot move the office immediately because the lease of Waddell & Reed does not expire until the end of the year, and renovations will involve a complete gutting of the space, which is currently divided into several offices.

“We had hoped that we would be able to get in sooner and get to work on it,” said Jimmy Wilkins, the county’s director of buildings, grounds and maintenance. “But odds are it will not be done in 2023.”

Wilkins said he hoped that the new office would be operational by the second quarter of 2024.

photo by: Matt Resnick/Journal-World

Customers receive help Monday, Aug. 7, 2023, at the Douglas County Treasurer’s Satellite Office location near 31st and Iowa streets.

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