El Paso’s Big Helen of Troy Company Announces Plans for Downtown Presence

A global housewares giant with longstanding ties to El Paso has announced that it is going to move its headquarters to a 20-story structure in the city’s central downtown area.

The Helen of Troy company was founded in El Paso in 1968 and has seen more than $2 billion in annual sales. For years the company operated out of a massive complex along Interstate 10 on the west side of the city that included some 412,000 square feet of warehouse space, and a 115,000 square-foot office.

Last fall the company announced plans to sell that property to the Eaton Corporation, a global power management company, for around $80 million.

Now Helen of Troy officials say they are going to move their headquarters into the One San Jacinto Plaza Building, located at 201 E. Main Street. That structure, which was completed in 1962, is regarded as one of the mainstays of the modern El Paso skyline and is the second tallest building in the city, next to the Wells Fargo Plaza skyscraper at 221 North Kansas Street.

Helen of Troy will occupy some 54,000 square feet of the One San Jacinto Plaza Building. In a statement, Noel Geoffroy, chief executive officer of the company, characterized the move as one that “continues our commitment to El Paso and our support of ongoing downtown revitalization efforts in the City, County, and the private sector.”

Geoffrey added that the new space for the company will provide “modern amenities and meet our space requirements for years to come.”

The move is seen as particularly important for a city that in recent years has been promoting the amenities of a vibrant downtown. “It demonstrates the power of vision and the power of working together to make our downtown the most dynamic in the country,” El Paso Mayor Oscar Leeser, in a statement, said of the Helen of Troy decision.

The Helen of Troy company was originally launched as a wig store before expanding into a variety of hair dryers and curling irons offerings and entering into a licensing agreement with industry legend Vidal Sassoon in 1975.

In subsequent decades Helen of Troy came to specialize in a wide variety of beauty, health & home, and housewares products. The company has annual sales of just over $2 billion.

The company has other operating locations in Boston as well as Lausanne, Switzerland, and Shenzhen, Guangdong.

Plans call for Helen of Troy to be in its new downtown El Paso location by early 2025.

​By Garry Boulard

No Responses

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.

Leave a Reply

Get stories like these right to your inbox. ​Sign up for our newsletter
Archives
Construction Reporter

Show Password Forgot Password?