Canada

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. :/

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.

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.

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.

No sympathy for shopping malls, it’s just a bad concept that should die faster

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