Just how much of an economic blow will Torrance take from the departure of Toyota Motor Corp., which announced last week that it’s moving its North American headquarters to Texas?

Not as bad as it might seem at first, if the experience of nearby Carson is any guide. Carson was home to the North American headquarters of Japanese car manufacturer Nissan Motor Corp. before that company moved to a suburb of Nashville, Tenn., in 2006, stripping Carson of 1,300 jobs.

It was a harsh loss. But eight years later, its 24-acre site has regained more than half those jobs.

“When Nissan announced it was relocating, we were very, very worried that we wouldn’t be able to fill the space for years, if not decades,” said Barry Waite, Carson’s business development manager. “We just didn’t realize how high the demand was for quality industrial space. So many companies were bursting at the seams that couldn’t find other space.”

Indeed, at least seven companies have moved into the former Nissan campus. The most prominent: Kaiser Permanente, which last year opened a three-story, 180,000-square-foot medical office building that now employs 190 physicians and staff, and could add as many as 100 over the next several years.

Other employers include tire distributor TireCo., electronics manufacturer Qual-Pro, business-to-business software company Enpointe Technologies and affordable housing developer MacFarlane Costa Housing Partners.

Somewhere between 700 and 800 people now work on the former Nissan campus that spans both sides of Figueroa Street near the interchange of the 110 and 405 freeways.

Most of those jobs pay more than the minimum wage. And, so far, the companies have arrived with a minimum of government support.

“In most cases, all we had to do was a little hand-holding and speeding up of permits,” Waite said. “The market took care of the rest.”

Even more remarkable, he said, just about every company that moved in paid on their own to refurbish or rebuild the old Nissan offices. Only in one instance was a low-interest government loan used.

Nonetheless, it still took three years before TireCo., Qual-Pro and Enpointe moved in and brought new jobs. Kaiser Permanente only opened its medical center last June, more than seven years after Nissan left.

Matter of size

There is a difference in the transformation, however.

“What you have in Carson is a big company being replaced by lots of smaller ones,” said Larry Kosmont, an L.A. economic development consultant. “Big companies are good for an economy. When they leave it hurts economically, socially, culturally and prestigewise. Big companies also help small and medium companies thrive, become stronger and, in some cases, bigger.”

Kosmont said that larger impact is lost when small companies come in to replace a big one.

“Declaring that the loss of the big fish like Nissan and Toyota is OK because little and midsized companies and foreign ventures are coming in to replace them is really just putting a Band-Aid on the reality,” he said. “The key is to put a stop to big companies leaving in the first place.”

But in Torrance, officials were given no advance warning that Toyota was even considering leaving other than courtesy calls the day before the announcement.

City officials are now looking to Carson’s experience as they grapple with Toyota’s pending departure. Toyota is the largest employer in Torrance, with roughly 3,900 people in nearly 2 million square feet of office space, much of which once served as a giant auto parts warehouse. By mid-2017, all those employees will be gone, either moving with Toyota to Plano, Texas, or leaving the company.

In the case of Nissan, roughly 550 of the 1,300 employees moved to the new headquarters in Franklin, Tenn. The remaining 750 employees left the company. Some former Nissan workers eventually found their way to Toyota.

The number of jobs to replace in Torrance is much greater than in Carson. And there’s another key difference: Nissan sold off its property within six months to Kearny Real Estate Co. of Los Angeles. Toyota is likely to hold on to its property for the next couple of years as it transitions to Texas.

Fran Fulton, Torrance’s economic development manager, said city officials this week will be sitting down with Toyota management to learn more about the automaker’s plans for its property.

In the meantime, Fulton said that within 72 hours after Toyota’s announcement, she had received several queries from companies or their representatives seeking space on the Toyota site. She had scheduled one meeting late last week with one representative of a company that wants to put several hundred employees there.

“This interest is telling us that this is an unheard of opportunity for this much industrial space in L.A. County for 2014,” Fulton said. “I’m sure these companies are also looking at the site’s proximity to Los Angeles International Airport, the ports and its easy freeway access.”

Kosmont said he was not surprised. He also said that because of the lead time before Toyota employees actually move out, the site should be mostly filled up within four years after it becomes vacant.

Fulton said the city would ultimately like to see a variety of companies on the site. “I see the site being great for health care and biotech companies or a tech center,” she said.