Argyle's Police Force Is Getting a Real Home

Argyle's Police Department Is Getting a Real Home

If you've driven past 506 N. U.S. 377 in Argyle, you've seen what passes for the town's police headquarters. No secure parking. A building Argyle has outgrown by its own admission. That changes now — slowly, but for real.

Argyle has hired Dallas-based architecture firm GFF and engineering firm Dunaway Associates to design a proper facility: the Donald G. Moser Law Enforcement Center, on six acres the town purchased along FM 407 in September 2024. The town council approved $117,000 in initial contracts last July — $69,000 for GFF to develop a master site plan and $48,000 for Dunaway to handle civil engineering work including surveys, utility layout, and drainage. Behind that sits $750,000 in certificates of obligation approved for the full pre-construction phase.

The numbers explain the urgency. Argyle's population has grown more than 166 percent since 2000, reaching roughly 6,294 residents in 2024. Seventeen sworn officers serve that entire town. That's not a crisis — Argyle's crime rate runs well below Texas averages — but you cannot keep pace with a tripling town out of someone else's undersized building forever.

The new center will sit south of FM 407 and east of U.S. 377. A developer-owned 12-acre tract next door is being eyed for destination retail. Mayor Ron Schmidt has been clear he wants a unified architectural look across all the new town buildings. No hodge-podge. That instinct is correct. A civic campus built cheaply or without coordination becomes a problem in twenty years.

The building carries the name of Donald Gordon Moser — a former Argyle mayor, firefighter, police officer, and SWAT tactical medic who died at age 56 in April 2022. That naming is not ceremony for ceremony's sake. Moser spent his career in exactly the kind of work this building is meant to support.

What's still missing: a total construction cost and a firm timeline. Neither has been announced. When those numbers land, Argyle residents will have to decide how they feel about the bill — and whether the town's growth is being managed or just happening to them. The master planning process with GFF and Dunaway is the prerequisite for any of that. You cannot price what hasn't been designed.

Watch for the master plan to come before council. That's the moment this moves from architects working quietly to a real public conversation about money.