Lawrence considers incentives for Alarm.com downtown office project
Alarm.com wanted a 95% tax rebate for 15 years, but Lawrence staff recommended 80% for 10 years on a $2.5 million downtown office plan. The move could grow local jobs from 37 to about 67.
Alarm.com asked Lawrence for public help to turn 714 Vermont St. into a downtown office for a growing workforce, but city staff recommended a smaller incentive package than the company first sought. The publicly traded smart-home technology company planned to invest about $2.5 million to renovate the former Climb Lawrence space into roughly 13,834 square feet of Class A office space, and it sought both a Neighborhood Revitalization Area property-tax rebate and Industrial Revenue Bonds that would exempt construction materials from sales tax.
The company originally requested a 95% property-tax rebate for 15 years. Staff instead backed an 80% rebate for 10 years, a cap that would put the city’s share of the rebate at about $162,000 over the decade. The sales-tax break tied to the industrial revenue bonds would add an estimated $4,100 in city impact. For Lawrence, the proposal was less about a single renovation than about how much tax base the city was willing to forgo to lock in a private investment and keep a fast-growing employer downtown.
Alarm.com’s Lawrence presence started small. The company opened here in 2019 with three employees, then added a second office in 2021 above Sylas and Maddy’s Ice Cream near 11th and Massachusetts streets. City agenda materials said the current Lawrence office serves about 37 employees, while the renovated Vermont Street building was expected to support about 67. Before the company settled on 714 Vermont St., it had also been considered for the former Lawrence Journal-World printing facility, another sign that downtown redevelopment sites remain competitive for employers looking to expand.
The building itself gave the project added weight. Constructed around 1948, 714 Vermont St. was once the University Ford sales building, and city staff described it as one of the few surviving examples of that dealership-era building type downtown. A February staff report said the company’s earlier option at 630 Massachusetts St. was not a suitable fit, which pushed the project toward Vermont Street instead. That made the deal a preservation question as well as an economic one, with the city trying to reuse an old downtown structure without overcommitting public dollars.
The city’s staff report said the project fit Lawrence’s prosperity and economic security goals, and it noted that the city incurred no cost because Alarm.com had already covered review expenses tied to the original incentives application. The core test for commissioners was straightforward: whether a smaller incentive package could help secure jobs, preserve a historic downtown building and still protect future tax revenue if the project did not fully deliver.
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