TORRANCE >> Five years after the Great Recession ravaged Hawthorne Boulevard, considered one of the nation’s prime stretches of retail real estate, automobile dealerships have led a resurgence of the busy thoroughfare by expanding, investing and creating jobs.

Saturday’s grand opening of a sleek Ferrari dealership attended by hundreds of invited guests underlines how formerly abandoned lots have filled in with businesses injecting millions in sales tax revenue into the local economy.

The arrival of the world-renowned prancing horse marquee is expected to draw another demographic to the lucrative stretch, bringing in monied buyers able to plunk down an average of $260,000 for a handcrafted moving work of art with a distinctive snarl.

“We’re planing to sell about 100 Ferraris a year between new and used,” Mattioli Automotive Group President Giacomo Mattioli said of the two-story, 23,000-square-foot showroom.

“Ferrari is obviously a luxury brand, but at the same time it’s not as exotic as it was in the past,” he added. “The goal is to reach the first-time buyer — people who have never bought a Ferrari, but owned a Porsche, for instance. There’s more people that would purchase a Ferrari now than there were five years ago.”

Some models have a waiting list of up to a year.

The South Bay Ferrari dealership is the third in Mattioli’s stable, which also includes Ferrari Beverly Hills and Ferrari Silicon Valley. A fourth, Ferrari Los Angeles, is due to open next month in Van Nuys.

Ferrari’s arrival in solidly middle-class Torrance is an indication of Hawthorne Boulevard’s status in the retail industry and commercial real estate market, said <URL destination="http://www2.naicapital.com/agents/sheri-messerlian">Sheri Messerlian, senior vice president of NAI Capital South Bay.

</URL>Known in some quarters as the “Queen of Hawthorne Boulevard,” Messerlian was instrumental in attracting Ferrari and other dealerships to Torrance.

More than 70,000 cars a day clog the eight-lane highway between Sepulveda and Artesia boulevards that’s anchored by two large regional malls — the South Bay Galleria in Redondo Beach and <URL destination="http://www.dailybreeze.com/general-news/20130704/del-amo-fashion-center-shopping-mall-to-see-transformation">under-renovation Del Amo Fashion Center, soon to add a Nordstrom and upscale fashion wing.

</URL>Residents of nearby affluent coastal communities such as Manhattan Beach and Palos Verdes Peninsula who frequent Torrance add to the allure, while the community’s weekday daytime population swells with an influx of workers from outside the South Bay attracted to high-paying jobs.

“Nationwide, it’s one of the most desirable stretches of retail thoroughfare,” Messerlian said. “We have the traffic count, we have the population density they are looking for and the financial ability to pay for goods. So, as a result, everybody wants to be on Hawthorne Boulevard.”

Indeed, the recession created opportunity for businesses able to survive the downturn. Plummeting prices for land enabled some dealerships to enter the market, while others significantly upgraded their properties.

“The companies that were in the right position financially saw the light,” said Vic Simonian, general manager of Scott Robinson Honda, a Hawthorne Boulevard staple since 1961. “We took the opportunity to capitalize.”

The dealership has doubled in size and now occupies almost the entire eastern side of Hawthorne Boulevard between Del Amo Boulevard and Spencer Street. It swallowed in one gulp the land once occupied by a bankrupt Saturn dealership.

A new showroom with 16,000 square feet of added space boasts two live palm trees built into the floor and will have murals up to 50 feet long of the Palos Verdes Peninsula, the Manhattan Beach Pier and the Los Angeles skyline.

The dealership invested in the neighborhood of $12 million in the 18-month renovation and will host a grand opening in about eight weeks. Employee numbers have jumped from 230 to 305, a return to pre-recession levels, Simonian said.

Penske Cadillac Buick GMC Southbay has a similar story.

A Cadillac dealership since 1967, the current ownership acquired the dealership in 2008, just as the economy crashed, said Phil Hartz, co-owner and CEO.

“It was probably the worst time in history to buy an automobile dealership, but we forged ahead anyway,” he said, adding that the Buick and GMC brands were added four years ago as General Motors realigned its dealer network.

Today, the dealership is among Cadillac’s top five in the nation, including commercial sales, has seen its employee head count grow from 50 to 86 and is spending up to $4 million upgrading the 3-acre site, which it is already threatening to outgrow.

“This dealership is growing dramatically and we’re becoming space constrained,” Hartz said.

That’s not atypical as dealerships have invested in eye-catching architecture and sometimes lavish customer amenities, prodded by automobile manufacturers that want their product to stand out in a crowd.

Audi Pacific, for instance, took over the former AutoNation lot that sat empty for six or seven years and built the nation’s largest Audi dealership two years ago, said General Manager Jeff LaPlant

The investment: $12 million, which included a 24,000-square-foot, 18-car showroom.

South Bay Mini, which features one of its cars seemingly crawling up an exterior wall, was spun off as a separate dealership last May on a 5-acre lot at a cost of about $15 million, said Vice President and General Manager Peter Boesen.

Neighboring South Bay BMW, under the same ownership, has a $4.5 million refurbishment under way. The dealership has a 150,000-square-foot,state-of-the-art showroom — the nation’s largest at the time it was built — and will soon have a Starbucks on site, too, replacing its current M Cafe.

“It’s great when people can get on the boulevard and shop wherever they want,” Boesen said. “It all kind of feeds on itself.”

Which is why the likes of Jin Kim, general manager of Martin Chevrolet, is more than happy to see Ferrari roll in on the same block of Hawthorne Boulevard as the venerable dealership, a fixture on the street since 1968.

“It will only help business, bringing in a high-end dealership (nearby),” he said, adding that sales increased about 15 percent in 2014 over the previous year. “We do have some common customers. They have families and they look for Suburbans, Tahoes.”

The dealership recently completed a two-year renovation that saw the entire facility gutted and rebuilt.

South Bay Mazda also is poised to mark the completion of recent renovations at its lot adjacent to Subaru Pacific, which itself moved to Torrance three years ago from Manhattan Beach, said General Manager James Hartzberg.

“We’ve almost outgrown the dealership,” he said. “Our business has more than tripled since we moved over here.

“It was pretty bleak here on the boulevard five years ago and it’s great to see all the life that’s come back in two years,” Hartzberg added.

There’s more to come, said former Mayor Frank Scotto, who added that other manufacturers are looking to enter the market, without naming names.

That includes Maserati.

The well-known Rusnak family, which owns 15 luxury car dealerships in Southern California, including the 2-year-old Rusnak Maserati of Pasadena, will begin construction later this year on a Hawthorne Boulevard site that formerly housed a furniture store and performance automotive shop.

“We expect to spend $3.5 million to $3.75 million on the project, and construction will commence in April,” said President and CEO Victoria Rusnak. “There’s a strong customer base for high-end luxury cars.”

The dealership is expected to eventually provide as many as 40 jobs and sell 50 to 75 new cars annually, in addition to about 30 used cars after it opens in December.

The burgeoning business climate and new and upgraded businesses that have put a shiny new face on much of Hawthorne Boulevard has the likes of LaPlant bullish on the Torrance market.

“There’s a lot of job opportunities in the automobile business,” he said. “I think over the next five, seven, 10 years Torrance is going to be a really dynamic automobile market.”