Wichita ? The U.S. Postal Service has already hired 300 employees to fill 1,100 new jobs at an encoding operation here that will move to a bigger building.

The Postal Service’s Remote Encoding Center will move from its current 32,000-square-foot building into a former discount store in Wichita that’s nearly three times larger.

“Anytime that we can do a retention and an expansion, that is a double whammy in our favor,” Wichita Mayor Carlos Mayans said. “So we were just elated that we could pull it off.”

A combination of state and local incentives sealed the deal for the Postal Service to expand in Wichita, including a forgivable $350,000 loan from the state, pending the promised employment numbers are reached, and a $1.41 million grant to reimburse the Postal Service for training.

Wichita and Sedgwick County also have each pledged $75,000 in forgivable loans and the Postal Service also will receive industrial revenue bonds to offset taxes for improvements to the building.

The service has 17 encoding centers nationwide, down from 55.

“The Wichita center has among the most efficient operations in the nation,” Postal Service regional spokesman Brian Sperry said.

According to Sperry, the Postal Service has received 2,500 applications and will accept applications again as 800 more jobs are filled over the next year.

About 300 of the jobs are full time and the others are between 30 and 40 hours a week. Pay begins at $12.43 an hour to work at the center, which operates 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

The center originally opened in 1994 when the Postal Service obtained the technology to read illegible mail that couldn’t go through automated systems. It has had 600 workers.

When an address can’t be read by machines a picture is sent electronically to workers in the encoding center. They determine the address and send it back to the processing center to be run again and given an address bar code.

Construction is under way and the move to the new center should start this fall.