Back

all kidding aside - this is bad for Toronto. Our downtown has always been pretty livable and showable, and Nordstrom - and before that Sears, and before that Eaton’s - has been the anchor tenant of the Eaton Centre, perhaps the anchor mall of the entire country.

also this is just in time for the Eaton Centre’s adjacent Queen St to be torn up for the next 20 or 30 years with glacially-paced subway construction, the completion of which I am not betting on living to see.

not good news. not good for downtown. not good for Toronto at all.

In conclusion, “Somebody should do something about this..”

Postscript: The collapse of Target in Canada is something that business schools will study for a long time. But unlike Nordstrom, Target Canada was a logistical mess. Huge supply chain problems when it collapsed in 2015. I remember going to their brand new flagship store (in the Toronto Stockyards), looking for something simple. Socks. For my kid. And they didn’t have any. They had lots of shelves though.

I thought Nordstrom had its act together.

Target barged in to Canada, thinking they knew how it worked, and opened, and rapidly closed, 133 stores. 133! Nordstrom only had 13, but they were (AFAIK) all high-profile anchor tenants in first class malls. You’d think that would work. But I guess we all stay home and buy everything online now.

As we continue this thread down memory lane, here are some nice reminders of what Target Canada stores looked like shortly before they closed.

https://slate.com/business/2015/01/target-closing-in-canada-these-pictures-show-why-it-failed.html