A publicly-traded company that provides all sorts of “smart home” technology, has filed plans to convert a long-vacant building in downtown Lawrence into a new office home for about 70 of its high-tech, high-paid employees.

The Nasdaq-traded tech firm Alarm.com is seeking financial incentives from the City of Lawrence to redevelop a portion of the former Journal-World printing plant at Sixth and Massachusetts streets into new high-tech office space.

Specifically, Alarm.com is seeking a 15-year property tax rebate as part of a multi-million dollar project that would convert about 13,000-square feet of the former newspaper printing plant into office space for 67 employees of the tech company.

The company currently has 37 employees in Lawrence, so the new project would almost double the company’s Lawrence workforce. The company anticipates hiring the 30 new employees over approximately the next two years, with the majority of the positions being software engineers with an average wage of $146,000 per year, according to documents filed with the city.

The new hires also would include software support staff with average wages of about $90,000 per year, and a handful of technical support positions at about $45,000 per year, according to the company filing.

Perhaps you remember that we wrote about Alarm.com in 2021 when it opened an office in the second floor space above the Sylas and Maddy’s Ice Cream shop at 11th and Massachusetts streets.

As we reported back then, the company got its first presence in Lawrence around 2019 with three employees. By 2021, the number of employees had grown to about 20, and now is nearly 40 today, according to information filed with the city.

Plans to get the company’s Lawrence workforce to nearly 70 employees indicate the company has stuck with its initial impression of Lawrence as a much more affordable place to attract high-tech workers than some of the more traditional tech hubs across the country.

“There is a lot of competition for employees in the D.C. area,” Brendan Allen, a software developer at Alarm.com, told the Journal-World in 2021. “There is a lot of competition in Redwood, Calif., and places like that on the West Coast. You are competing with Amazon and Google and companies like that. My point is we have a really good engineering school here, and the people who want to stay in Lawrence (are) pretty good.

“We just don’t have enough tech jobs to keep them.”

Plus, Allen — who I didn’t get a chance to talk to this week but is currently listed as Alarm.com’s senior director of software development and a leader of the local project — said downtown Lawrence has a lot of the amenities that make it easy to recruit workers to.

“You can walk downstairs and have five options for food in one block and 30 in just a couple of more blocks,” Allen said in 2021. “We had a visitor from our D.C. office awhile back, and he has been trying to transfer here ever since. We have a huge asset in downtown Lawrence to do this.”

The company’s proposed new location follows that same formula. In fact, part of the former Journal-World building is under renovation currently for a new Q39 barbecue restaurant. That redevelopment is underway on the New Hampshire Street side of the building, which stretches from the west side of New Hampshire Street to the east side of Massachusetts Street.

The Alarm.com development would be on the Massachusetts Street side of the building, according to basic information filed with the city. Details, however, were limited as the Lawrence City Commission isn’t yet being asked to approve a development plan for the project.

Rather, commissioners at their Tuesday evening meeting are being asked to accept the company’s application for economic development incentives.

The company is seeking 15 years of property tax rebates under the city’s existing Neighborhood Revitalization Act program. That program provides an incremental tax rebate, meaning the city isn’t being asked to forgive any of the existing property taxes that the building currently generates. Rather, the NRA program allows the city to rebate a portion of the new property taxes that would be generated by the building once it has been renovated.

Once renovations are complete, the fair-market value of the building will increase, and thus its property tax bill will as well. The company anticipates investing $3.5 million to renovate the property. The requested NRA would allow the company to receive a rebate on 95% of those new property taxes. The length of the rebate would be for the next 15 years, according to documents filed with the city.

Additionally, the company is seeking $200,000 from the city to help cover a portion of the costs to demolish part of the building that currently extends into the alley that runs between New Hampshire and Massachusetts streets. The filing doesn’t provide details about how the alley — which currently does not go all the way through the block would be configured. However, the filing states the new configuration would “enhance the usability of the alley and benefit adjacent property owners that can more easily schedule and take deliveries.”

The company also is asking for the project to be eligible for industrial revenue bonds, which would allow the redevelopment to be exempt from paying sales taxes on the construction materials used to renovate the property.

The project would help fill vacancy that has existed at the northern entrance to downtown since 2014, when the previous owners of the Journal-World closed the printing plant. (Full disclosure: The current owners of the Journal-World are not involved in the redevelopment. Ownership of the printing plant location remained with the Simons family, which previously owned the Journal-World.)

Early last year it looked as if a Kansas City developer was set to undertake a major redevelopment of the site. As the Journal-World reported at various times in 2024, KC developer Vince Bryant had plans to create high-end office space, a food hall, and enclosed plaza area, among other features, in the former printing plant building.

But as financing costs increased and several of Bryant’s development projects in Kansas City became more complicated, the printing plant redevelopment stalled. Q39 — the popular Kansas City barbecue restaurant — did complete a purchase of a portion of the building, and construction work is well underway on that restaurant project.

Alarm.com would be the second major user for the revamped building, although the company wouldn’t occupy all the remaining space in the building. As currently configured, the printing plant building is about 70,000 square feet in size.

It wasn’t immediately clear, though, how much of the building Alarm.com may own or control. The company has been on a significant growth curve. The company — which trades under the ticker ALRM — expects 2025 revenue to be near the $1 billion mark. The company has made a number of investments to make it a larger player in the smart home and security business for both residential and commercial customers. The company offers everything from smart thermostats to remote video monitoring services.

Lawrence city commissioners will begin their meeting at 5 p.m. Tuesday at City Hall. The Alarm.com item is on the city’s consent agenda, given that the city is only being asked to accept the application for incentives. Once the application is accepted, the city staff will prepare a variety of reports that measure the cost and benefits to the city of the requested incentives. The incentive request is expected to come back to commissioners for final approval in the coming months.

Likely, the city’s planning commission also will be asked in the coming months to grant a multitude of development approvals for the project, which will have to meet a host of building requirements in the historic downtown district.