Wickes to Acquire Grace’s Home Improvement Units

Expanding its stake in the hotly competitive home improvement market in California, Wickes Cos. said Monday that it has reached an agreement to buy Home Centers West and Orchard Supply Hardware from W. R. Grace & Co.

Terms were not disclosed. Santa Monica-based Wickes, which owns Builders Emporium and Wickes Lumber--both home improvement chains--is acquiring a total of 109 stores in seven states. Of these, 80 are in California.

The acquisition will raise Wickes’ annual sales from its building materials group to more than $2 billion. The sale includes the Ole’s Home Improvement chain with 62 stores in California, Arizona and Nevada; Orchard Supply Hardware of San Jose, with 21 stores in Northern California; the Handy Dan Colorado chain of 10 home improvement stores in Colorado and four in West Texas; Cashways, with four stores in El Paso, and Allwoods, with eight stores in New Mexico and Utah.

In all, the stores had $600 million in 1985 sales.

Sanford C. Sigoloff, Wickes chairman and chief executive, said the 109 stores will ultimately be known as Builders Emporium, the Wickes chain that now has 65 stores.

The new stores will give Builders Emporium its first entry into the California market north of Bakersfield, its first outlets in Phoenix, and its first stores in Colorado and Texas, he said.

Grace had previously disclosed plans to divest its entire retail group of 660 stores. It said last month that it intended to sell 567 of them, including 319 home improvement stores such as Ole’s, to an investor group headed by Harold Geneen, former chairman of ITT Corp., and David J. Mahoney, former chairman of Norton Simon Inc. The price was $500 million.

A spokesman for Grace said the company is “continuing to negotiate with the Geneen group on the remainder of the retail group.”

Grace completed the sale of its Herman’s Sporting Goods unit last month to Dee Corp. PLC, a British company, for $227 million.