A manufacturer that recently announced its impending relocation to Hutto will soon become one of the city’s largest employers. Paradigm Metals, a Pflugerville-addressed manufacturer technically located in Austin’s extraterritorial jurisdiction, announced Aug. 16 that the company is moving into a 100,000-square-foot custom-ordered building in Titan Development’s Innovation Business Park. The manufacturing company is the first tenant yet announced at the development just east of SH 130. President and CEO Dan Chew said he hopes to begin construction on the new facility in November and open this time next year. Paradigm Metals has 282 employees at its current facility so far in 2018, and the company projects it will grow to 416 full-time workers by 2021. “We’re bringing between 250 and 275 employees—minimum—to Hutto when we move into that building,” said Blain Ogea, chief operations officer for Paradigm Metals. “That right there should be exciting for Hutto.” Chew in 1984 founded Paradigm Metals alongside his brother, Steve, in California. By 1996 the company had relocated to Round Rock, and in 2005 Paradigm Metals expanded to its current facility. Paradigm Metals primarily manufactures material components for semiconductors, according to Chew and Ogea, though the company handles a variety of manufacturing orders, including powder coating, screen printing, machining and more. “We build products for technological companies,” Chew said. “Semiconductors are in everything from your cell phone to your washing machine. Your car is filled with them.” The move to Innovation Business Park represents a massive expansion for the company as Paradigm Metals’ 100,000-square-foot Hutto plant stands to be twice the size of its current facility. “Our upside and growth potential mandated that we had to have more space. That’s why we’re going two times the size of the building,” Ogea said. For Hutto City Manager Odis Jones, securing Paradigm Metals as the first tenant at Innovation Business Park helps fulfill aspects of the city’s master plans. An economic impact report done by the city expects the influx of Paradigm Metals’ employees to create an additional 280 jobs through retail spending and temporary construction jobs. Jones alleges that will help to relieve tax stress off homeowners. “It fits in the overall plan in developing the city in a holistic way. The tax base isn’t so dependent on our residential base,” Jones said. Paradigm Metals’ facility also stands to be built less than half a mile from the Texas State Technical College campus. Ogea said the company has worked with the college to create skilled labor curriculum in the past, and now Paradigm Metals and Hutto officials envision an environment where residents can take classes at TSTC and then walk across the street to clock in and work. “We hire a lot of people out of that school. ... Now they’re literally in our backyard,” Ogea said. By the time it opens its doors, Paradigm Metals will be the third manufacturer to recently relocate to Hutto. Two California companies—AEND Industries Inc. and JRS Co. Inc.—will begin operations in the coming months, adding gainful manufacturing jobs to the city’s tax roll. “A manufacturing job is a base economic job,” said Kevin Reid, chairman of Titan Development, to Hutto City Council in August. “For every one of those jobs, historically, two or three more jobs are created.”