Once home to a grocery store, Sugar Maple Square along Ky. 185 will soon nourish public safety in Warren County.

Warren Fiscal Court on Thursday approved the $104,250 bid of Bowling Green-based DRF (Design, Realize, and Furnish) Architecture to provide architectural and engineering services for a remodel of Sugar Maple Square that will turn a large portion of the building into new headquarters for the county Sheriff’s Office.

The Sheriff’s Office had already moved its Criminal Investigations Department and some other functions to the 56,848-square-foot building that county government purchased in 2021 for $1.4 million.

Plans unveiled at Thursday’s meeting call for a 30,000-square-foot portion of the building that had been a Houchens Supermarket to become the new home for a sheriff’s office training facility, offices, and public-facing business functions.

All those functions will be leaving the downtown county courthouse, and Sheriff Brett Hightower says that will have many benefits for a county department that has grown to 115 employees.

“One great thing over there is that there will be ample parking for the public,” he said. “It will be handicapped-accessible, and we’ll even have a drive-through window for people paying taxes and other things.”

Hightower said bringing the CID, patrol officers, training room, evidence room, and business functions under one roof will help his department and the public.

“We’ll be more centrally located than we are now,” he said. “We are limited in office space now, so this will really help. It will prepare us for the future.”

Because it’s a renovation instead of building from the ground up, both Hightower and county Judge-Executive Doug Gorman believe the new Sheriff’s Office headquarters can be completed quickly.

“We’re just renovating the inside of the building, so it won’t take as long as building new,” Gorman said.

Gorman said the county will go through a bid process for the construction, and he said work on the building could start in April or May of next year and possibly be completed by the end of 2025.

“This is a big step,” Gorman said. “The Sheriff’s Office is tasked with so many responsibilities. This will help with training and with the future of the Sheriff’s Office.”

Hightower said the larger quarters will help his office better meet the needs of a county that is among the fastest-growing in the state.

“In this year’s budget, we’re adding two deputies,” he said. “Just with the increased population, our call volume continues to tick up. This will allow us to plan for the future.”

Gorman said fiscal court has been “very deliberate” in deciding how to best utilize the Sugar Maple Square property, and he said the same approach applies to some other property the county purchased earlier this year.

The fiscal court magistrates voted in January to purchase for about $800,000 three properties on State Street that were damaged in a July 2023 fire.

The buildings at 1019, 1023 and 1029 State St. have been razed, but Gorman said no decision has been made on what to do with the property.

“We’re being very deliberate,” he said. “We have a lot of options. Everything we do, we want to be for the long term. We’re in the process of deciding what to do with that property.”

The next meeting of Warren Fiscal Court is scheduled for Thursday, Dec. 19 at 9 a.m. in the county courthouse.