The big news in the (Canadian) retail world this morning is that Target has confirmed that it will be shutting down its entire Canadian operation. That means 133 stores will close and about 17,600 employees will soon be out of work. Here’s what the CEO had to say:

“After a thorough review of our Canadian performance and careful consideration of the implications of all options, we were unable to find a realistic scenario that would get Target Canada to profitability until at least 2021,” said Brian Cornell, who became the new chief executive officer last summer.

I can already hear the keyboards typing as business schools across Canada and the world prepare this case study: Why did Target Canada fail after not even 2 years?

I don’t really want to focus on that in this post, but my initial sense is that they came in too big and too undifferentiated. Maybe they underestimated the particularities of the Canadian market and shopper, but they certainly didn’t come in lean.

They bought up over a hundred Zellers leases and used that platform to obtain a critical mass quickly. But the problem with this approach is that it meant lots of upfront costs and fewer opportunities to adjust as they gained real feedback from the market.

Regardless of what happened, I’m more interested in what the impact will be to the retail real estate industry going forward. Remember, Target is an anchor. And when it entered Canada, it was viewed as an opportunity to refresh some of our tired malls – many of which were already showing signs of dying.

So what happens now? Who comes in to fill their shoes?

Image: Flickr

Back in 2011, blogTO ran an article calling Geary Avenue one of the ugliest streets in Toronto. And it’s certainly up there. It’s an industrial street with a mixture of different building types (lots of autoshops), giant power lines running along the south side of it, and a railway disconnecting it from the city to the south.

But as somebody who used to live around the corner from this street, I’ve had my eye on it for a number of years. Despite the fact that it was never very pretty, it always felt like an area with lots of potential. And sometimes it’s the areas that seem most unlikely to gentrify, that end up doing exactly that.

Probably the first signs of hipness came with the opening of places like Kitch Bar on Geary Avenue and Actinolite on Ossington Avenue. More recently though, it was announced that Dark Horse Espresso will be opening on Geary and that Bellwoods Brewery will be opening their second location on Dupont Street in this incredible building:

So whether you call it Dovercourt Park, Dovercourt Village, or some other name, I think it’s only a matter of time before Ossington cool moves north and the area in and around Dovercourt Road and Dupont Street becomes one of the hippest areas in the city. Get ready.

Full disclosure: I own a house very close to this neighborhood.

Images: Actinolite and Bellwoods Brewery

The big news in the (Canadian) retail world this morning is that Target has confirmed that it will be shutting down its entire Canadian operation. That means 133 stores will close and about 17,600 employees will soon be out of work. Here’s what the CEO had to say:

“After a thorough review of our Canadian performance and careful consideration of the implications of all options, we were unable to find a realistic scenario that would get Target Canada to profitability until at least 2021,” said Brian Cornell, who became the new chief executive officer last summer.

I can already hear the keyboards typing as business schools across Canada and the world prepare this case study: Why did Target Canada fail after not even 2 years?

I don’t really want to focus on that in this post, but my initial sense is that they came in too big and too undifferentiated. Maybe they underestimated the particularities of the Canadian market and shopper, but they certainly didn’t come in lean.

They bought up over a hundred Zellers leases and used that platform to obtain a critical mass quickly. But the problem with this approach is that it meant lots of upfront costs and fewer opportunities to adjust as they gained real feedback from the market.

Regardless of what happened, I’m more interested in what the impact will be to the retail real estate industry going forward. Remember, Target is an anchor. And when it entered Canada, it was viewed as an opportunity to refresh some of our tired malls – many of which were already showing signs of dying.

So what happens now? Who comes in to fill their shoes?

Image: Flickr

Back in 2011, blogTO ran an article calling Geary Avenue one of the ugliest streets in Toronto. And it’s certainly up there. It’s an industrial street with a mixture of different building types (lots of autoshops), giant power lines running along the south side of it, and a railway disconnecting it from the city to the south.

But as somebody who used to live around the corner from this street, I’ve had my eye on it for a number of years. Despite the fact that it was never very pretty, it always felt like an area with lots of potential. And sometimes it’s the areas that seem most unlikely to gentrify, that end up doing exactly that.

Probably the first signs of hipness came with the opening of places like Kitch Bar on Geary Avenue and Actinolite on Ossington Avenue. More recently though, it was announced that Dark Horse Espresso will be opening on Geary and that Bellwoods Brewery will be opening their second location on Dupont Street in this incredible building:

So whether you call it Dovercourt Park, Dovercourt Village, or some other name, I think it’s only a matter of time before Ossington cool moves north and the area in and around Dovercourt Road and Dupont Street becomes one of the hippest areas in the city. Get ready.

Full disclosure: I own a house very close to this neighborhood.

Images: Actinolite and Bellwoods Brewery