Ikea’s Takeover of Stor Leaves Carson Officials Seeing Green : Revenue: The city expects even more money to flow into its coffers, thanks to the merger that will close Stor’s Torrance outlet and avert a fight for dollars between furniture giants.

The South Bay may never have been big enough for two huge retail furniture outlets. But some key Carson officials are happier today now that the question won’t have to be answered.

With the announcement last week that furnishing giant Ikea will take over archrival Stor, the city got an unforeseen boost: Ikea will close the Stor outlet in Torrance’s Del Amo mall, leaving the planned Ikea store in Carson as the remaining furniture giant in the South Bay.

“With the elimination of Stor, that’s obviously going to help (Ikea) here,” Carson Mayor Michael I. Mitoma said. “Their sales numbers will be increasing, and that’s exciting news for the city.”

With the announced merger Tuesday, Stor terminated its lease agreement with Del Amo, although mall officials said it was unclear when the 90,000 square-foot outlet will close.

However, it appears likely that the Torrance furniture outlet will remain open for several months, possibly until Ikea unveils its new warehouse store at Carson Mall. The 200,000-square-foot outlet is scheduled to open in November, although no final agreement has been reached yet with the city.

Ikea officials said they plan to hire as many of the 130 employees from the Del Amo store as possible. However, they said it is too early to tell how the transition between the stores will be accomplished. Stor executives could not be reached for comment.

“You can’t guarantee to 130 people sight unseen that they will have jobs,” Ikea spokeswoman Cynthia Neiman said. “After the shareholders vote, only then will we make a determination as to how the takeover will go. We’ve never done this before.”

Ikea, the Swedish-based retailing powerhouse, had been looking for a South Bay location for its next store in the Southland before settling on Carson last year. The outlet’s first area store is in Burbank. The world’s largest furnisher retailer with 100 outlets and $3.8 billion in annual sales worldwide, Ikea will place its name on the Stor outlets, giving it four stores in the Southern California region.

The acquisition makes the Swedish company, which pioneered the concept of warehouses for low-cost, ready-to-assemble European furniture, one of California’s strongest furniture merchants. The deal, which is expected to become final within six weeks, is valued at more than $20 million.

The merger also ends the longtime rivalry between the two stores, which escalated after Ikea accused Stor in a 1987 lawsuit of copying nearly its entire method of doing business.

But the one thing Stor couldn’t copy eventually led to the merger: It could never match Ikea’s financial strength and size and lost money almost from its inception.

Carson officials said they were never too concerned with the competition, although they stand to reap a financial windfall with the closure of the Torrance store. The project is expected to generate more than $20 million in sales tax revenue for the city over the next 30 years, but Mitoma now thinks that figure will go much higher.

“I think that if they do nearly as well as expected, Ikea will become our largest single revenue generator,” he said. “At the very least, I think a lot more people will be coming here to shop.”