Look who’s expanding in Delano — again

Ben Hutton admits he made a slight miscalculation with a Delano client and now is making up for it.

The client? His own Hutton design and construction firm.

“This story starts in 2018,” he said.

That’s when Hutton was designing the firm’s new, almost 25,000-square-foot headquarters, which was supposed to have three floors.

“I said, ‘We’ll never need that space. Let’s have two floors.’ ”

The firm has grown so much since then, it’s already expanded once and now is about to again.

When Hutton moved from its previous headquarters on West Street, it jumped from 50 work stations to 75 at 111 N. Sycamore St.

It then moved its facilities group into its own building at 111 N. Oak St., which allowed for more office and storage space.

The 90 total work stations still aren’t enough, though.

“So we’re going to do it again,” Hutton said.

The firm acquired some more property on the west side of Oak Street that once belonged to All Things Barbecue. Hutton will build more office space with another 35 or so work stations at 121 N. Oak. Its support services, such as marketing, accounting and IT, will move there.

So why not simply add that third floor at the headquarters?

“It would be more complicated, and so we decided to go the campus route,” Hutton said.

The new building will be about 10,000 square feet, which includes an addition the firm is building.

Although Hutton admits his company appears “unable to see far enough in our own future to see our needs,” he said all that growth is “a wonderful problem to have.”

Also, he said, “It’s always fun to have new space, and it’s fun to be our own clients and be able to create things for ourselves.”

The firm will move into the extra space by the end of the year.

So did All Things Barbecue leave anything behind? Smokers? Grills? Perhaps a fire pit?

“Unfortunately, they took all of their inventory,” Hutton said. “If I was a better negotiator, I would have asked for a grill in the deal.”