Monitronics spreads out into new headquarters

DALLAS - Almost a week before its 10-year anniversary in late August, Monitronics International has relocated its headquarters across the street from its former location in northwest Dallas, gaining more than 47,000 square feet to spread out its administrative and executive departments and offices. Monitronics signed a long-term lease for the third, fourth and sixth floors of a six-story building and will retain space at the its previous headquarters. The company now occupies approximately 67,000 square feet, but its monitoring station and parts of its customer service department will remain in its current location. Employing more than 500, the company sought more space to accommodate growth over the past few years. In 1994, Monitronics had 14,000 accounts and now it mon-itors more than 460,000. “It was obviously an attractive solution to our problems,” said Jim Hull, president and chief executive officer, as he explained the need to find a larger space for his business. Monitronics originally occupied one story of the Valley View Tech Center, working within 4,000 square feet. The company’s growth over the years required additional expansion over the entire site. The company does not have any offices outside of the state, but does have a handful of sales people located throughout the United States that handle dealer recruitment. Now approaching the half-million mark, Monitronics monitors 435,000 accounts that it owns and handles third party monitoring for 50,000. Overall, residential accounts are 90 percent of its business. When Hull started the company 10 years ago, he set out to build a full-service monitoring company, focused on the residential market. “I knew exactly what I had to do to make it successful,” said Hull. “Monitronics’ claim to fame is when we started the company, we said we have to buy and provide high-quality service” Hull finds the security industry to be a healthy market at this time. That doesn’t mean it has remained unchanged over the last decade. He said the security market has matured and become sophisticated. But the way Hull understood the market back then, and how he handles it now, has not wavered. “We’ve stayed very focused and have not changed our model at all,” he said.