Waller County is looking to move its various Precinct 4 offices to one centralized location closer to residents in the Katy area. Officials plan to build a new precinct annex and open it by late 2018. County Construction Manager Danny Rothe said 7.5 acres were purchased on the south side of Hwy. 90 approximately 0.3 miles west of Woods Road in Brookshire. “The plan is to bring together all of Precinct 4 offices,” he said. “We do want to make it where we can grow.” About 70 to 80 parking spaces are planned for the building in anticipation of a proposed courtroom. The annex will also have a sheriff’s office substation, an office for Commissioner for Precinct 4 Justin Beckendorff, Justice of the Peace and district clerk offices, a tax office as well as a place to process vehicle renewals, and potentially a Texas Department of Public Safety substation. “We’re trying to make it convenient for people in Katy or Brookshire to do their business there,” he said. Rothe said $3 million is budgeted for what he expects will be a “simple metal building.” He said county officials wanted to act quickly before land in that area became too expensive, and because most available tracks near the designated site were considerably larger than what Waller County needed. “Commissioner Beckendorff spent a considerable amount of time scouting locations for a new annex and with [Precinct] 4’s growth, we knew it had to be a location that was more centrally located towards the Brookshire/Katy area,” Waller County Judge Trey Duhon III said in an email. Residential development going on in those vicinities, and the likelihood that growth affecting the precinct boundaries after the 2020 census were also taken into consideration, he said. Negotiations for the site began in late February and the property was closed on June 21, he said. Designs are not complete but architects are expected to be signed by late January. The county also still has to coordinate water and sewer lines for the site, whose surrounding buildings largely use groundwater wells.