The approval from Ontario Superior Court Judge Peter Osborne allows the retailer, which dates back to 1670, to begin selling off inventory at most of its 80 Hudson’s Bay stores, three Saks Fifth Avenue locations and 13 Saks Off 5th shops in Canada.
“This is the art of the possible and we are where we are today. In my view, there is no other alternative,” Judge Osborne said.
The six stores being saved from the liquidation sale include the flagship on Yonge Street in Toronto, as well as a store in the city’s Yorkdale mall and another farther north in Hillcrest Mall in Richmond Hill, Ontario The remaining three span Montreal, the Carrefour Laval mall and Point-Claire, Quebec.
Never been huge on Hudson’s Bay, but honestly this can be owed to improper regulation of online shopping. The fact that the government hasn’t done more to protect Canadian businesses from online competitors, namely Amazon, is absurd, especially with the ridiculously wasteful practices Amazon has made an industry standard.
It’s already a pain for malls and shopping outlets to find replacements for old Sears and Target/Zellers locations. This being added to the mix is going to deal a huge blow to malls where Hudson’s Bay is seen as an anchor, and an equally large blow is going to be dealt to the social shopping experience.
Being from Edmonton, Kingsway Mall already comes to mind. When Sears closed, the space eventually became occupied by a Walmart, and it’s worrisome to think of another heavily American retailer swooping in on where Hudson’s Bay is currently, or it being the case that they demolish the entire section of the mall similar to what they did at Mill Woods Town Centre with the old Target/Zellers space.
HBC would have been OK except a private equity hedge fund bought up controlling shares, which began the downslide. Private equity is at fault here, as always.
And I get the HBC’s history of racism and theft from Inuit and First Nations people is egregious and deserves no sympathy, but there’s 9300+ jobs on the table. That’s gonna hit a lot of us hard. :/
Private equity are the scavengers of the economy. They go after declining companies whose value is overly concentrated in illiquid assets.
The Bay has been rotting for decades as a company. The only people who regularly shop there are the non-price-conscious, non-fashionable white upper middle class (Karens, basically). They haven’t been viable for middle class or working class shoppers for many years now.
Turning those old spaces to Walmarts is worse. I’ve stopped using Amazon and Walmart 💪🏼
HBC used to be the OG Amazon. You got a big catalog and ordered.by mail.
They could’ve been the Canadian Amazon.
Sorry to disagree.
It’s not about Amazon or Temu. Here in the Netherlands, we actually did protect our market and two Dutch online stores are more popular than Amazon.
There is just a huge shift to online shopping due to convenience and cost. There is just less demand for physical stores.
Some of the online shops do open physical showrooms. Relatively small stores (think Apple store) where people can see some of the more expensive stuff before buying.
But huge malls and department stores will only be a thing for the largest cities and for outlets, to attract people who like to physically shop.
The smaller malls and department stores just aren’t needed anymore and will forever disappear from our landscapes.
Mall traffic has been declining for decades. It’s not like I haven’t gone into one every few years to look around… The last time I purchased something there was dress cloths for work, and maybe some dress shoes.
NOTHING about those stores has kept up with the times or trends, they just kind of kept falling more and more into disrepair as time went on…
It isn’t even US competitors, a lot of what they sell I would go elsewhere to Canadian options for anyway.
I am more likely to purchase furniture and appliances from The Brick or Trail Appliances.
The Bay or HBC was decades over due for a complete overhaul of its assortment and its retails space.
Malls came out as a solution to the lack of community a planner/developer saw in the relatively new suburban experiment. He hoped malls would blend shopping, community, and socializing all into one place, similar to how the mixed use, mid rise neighbourhoods would feel. Unfortunately the mall fell prey to captialism and as automobiles kept becoming more popular, the mall was less about community and more about a convenient shopping experience.
The developer who made the mall regrets it, it didn’t turn out to be a beacon of community like he had hoped and instead it further promoted isolation, suburbia, and car dependancy in our cities.
Every time I went into the Bay in Dorval it would be depressing. To think that this store has not been changed since my father was a child. Management never spent money to renovate and the maintenance on their infrastructure has always been shit.
They’re like the Canadian Tire of clothing. The regular price seemed not to matter because there was always a 20-60% off code or promotion. The quality of clothing has also dropped hard. Besides Levi’s jeans, and I guess Docker… the rest of it is fast fashion, drop ship-esque companies.
I think the best course of action for most of the old stores is developing the land into housing and mixing commercial and residential zoning more. Trying to find another big box store for the place is follwing the same path we have for the last 50 years, promoting further capitalism and isolation in our communities.
Redeveloping the stores into mid or high rise density would help alleviate the housing crisis a bit. Most locations are probably already pretty close to transit corridors as well, making it possible for people in these new developments to live without a car if needed, reducing transportation emissions and cost of living for those individuals. A big big big part of our housing crisis and cost of living crisis lies in the fact we almost exclussivly build SFH, many of which have been getting bigger over the years.
Canada has been threatened by our neighbour that we used to look up to. Its time to ask if we want to keep following the devleopment policy and practices they use, or consider using some of the practices more common in the European Union (transit and density) which many Canadians are ready to join.
No sympathy for shopping malls, it’s just a bad concept that should die faster
I would have thought the goal is to keep some of the stores for historical reasons.
Bu they’re keeping these weird suburban stores like hillcrest, yorkdale, laval, and pointe claire…
Should have kept vancouver, and turned winnipeg into a museum or something.
In 2022 Winnipeg’s store was donated to the “Southern Chiefs’ Organization (SCO), which represents Manitoba’s 34 southern First Nations communities. (T)he building will be redeveloped with a wide range of mixed uses benefiting Indigenous people, while also providing some new life for the city centre.” Source
Unfortunately the cost of refurbishing the building has ballooned to $310 million. Source
