Longmont toy startup preps for launch, plans new manufacturing facility

LONGMONT — A Longmont-based toy startup nearing launch is formulating plans to build a manufacturing and distribution center just east of the city in southwest Weld County, though it could be a couple of years before the facility comes to fruition.

HyPars LLC has a lease with an option to buy on a 1-acre piece of land at 1420 Skyway Drive in the Vista Commercial Center. The company is working through the approval process with Weld County officials.

HyPars makes plastic hyperbolic-paraboloid-shaped building toys from which the company name is derived. Think Lego without all the 90-degree angles.

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HyPars were invented and patented by retired nuclear engineer Denny Newland, who founded the company in July with his son Isaac Newland and daughter-in-law Mitzi Newland.

Denny Newland lives in Port Townsend, Wash., but the company is so far being run out of Isaac’s and Mitzi’s garage in Longmont. HyPars shipped a few stocking-stuffer kits just before Christmas, but the company is planning its official launch later this month. Denny Newland, who plans to move to Longmont, said he’s got ideas for five additional toys long-term if HyPars builds enough momentum with its first.

“The three of us decided to give it a shot,” Denny Newland, 68, said in a phone interview.

HyPars initially is contracting out production to an injection molding company in Washington state, but the hope is to bring that operation in-house to Longmont. When that transition happens is the part that’s up in the air.

Denny Newland — whose career included stints with Westinghouse and the Oak Ridge National Lab, as well as some time at the Rocky Flats site in Colorado — said the company is planning a 12,000-square-foot building that would be built in two phases. While the company is close to gaining county approvals, he said cost will be the major determining factor on construction timing. With final building designs still being worked out, he said he won’t have a solid cost estimate until the end of March.

“Quite frankly, we might spend a year trying to build up the business before we build the building, maybe even two years,” Newland said.

The land where HyPars is planning to build is owned by Longmont developer Wendell Pickett.

Pickett bought the land about a decade ago, and had gained approvals for an office building. But those plans were shelved when the recession hit, and Pickett said this week that he decided to sell despite the economy’s turnaround.

“We didn’t feel like the market was quite where it needed to be for what we had,” Pickett said.