Torrance >> Costco has filed an application with the city to build a larger store with more parking on a long-vacant, 23-acre parcel on Lomita Boulevard adjacent to its current location.

The warehouse discount store, one of the busiest in the Issaquah, Wash.-based chain, is in escrow to buy what is the city’s largest remaining developable parcel of vacant land, Mayor Frank Scotto said.

“They are going to build a much bigger and better facility with a car wash and larger fuel station,” he said. “This will increase their employment base in Torrance.”

When Costco opened in Torrance in 1998, the 148,000-square-foot store employed 225 workers and was expected to generate annual sales of $90 million.

The new store would total 161,500 square feet on 17.5 acres, according to the plans filed with the city.

It would also have 874 parking spaces, more than the current 761 that are often jammed on weekends. The number of parking spaces at the new store exceeds the city’s parking requirements and should ensure the parking issues are a thing of the past, said Gregg Lodan, the city’s planning manager.

The land formerly was eyed for medical offices. New York-based Rockefeller Group Development Corp. won entitlements in 2010 to build more than 350,000 square feet of medical office condominiums on the site, but with an excess of such property available in the South Bay the project was never built.

Still, the new plans also show three, two-story medical office condominiums totaling 71,000 square feet on the remainder of the site.

Rockefeller is not retaining any ownership interest in the site, a company spokesman said.

With Costco moving, Home Depot, which has had a store in the nearby Crossroads Shopping Center at Crenshaw Boulevard and Skypark Drive since 1992, is eying a move into the larger building Costco now leases, Scotto said.

“It’s very good news,” he said. “There’s a very good chance (Home Depot’s move) is going to happen. If it transpires, then the only question is what would go where Home Depot is today.”

A city official who requested anonymity said several retailers are looking into expanding into Torrance, including popular Cuban bakery Porto’s, which at one time had considered the Home Depot location.

That’s not going to happen now, the official said, noting the 121,000-square-foot Home Depot building, which also includes a 21,000-square-foot garden center, is too small for Porto’s.

Founded in Glendale in 1975 in a modest 300-square-foot location, Porto’s now has a 20,000-square-foot space in the city and locations in Burbank and Downey.

Porto’s invested an eye-opening $16 million in Downey to buy and build its restaurant property when it opened the location in 2010, according to the Long Beach Press-Telegram.

The outlay also paid for a new 200-space parking garage and the rehabilitation of a neighboring five-story office building.

It has, by all accounts, been incredibly successful with lines of customers regularly snaking out the door.

Scotto said Friday he was unaware of Porto’s interest in Torrance, but welcomed it nonetheless, along with the apparent upgrades of Costco and Home Depot.

“It’s great that everyone is bumping themselves up into better facilities,” Scotto said. “It’s a domino thing; Costco has to do theirs first before anything else happens.”

Representatives of Costco, Home Depot and Porto’s did not return calls seeking comment.

Researcher Sam Gnerre contributed to this report.