Hudson's Bay to permanently close longtime Burnaby store location

Exterior of the Hudson's Bay building wing at the City of Lougheed mall. (Google Maps)

Another original anchor tenant of the City of Lougheed shopping centre, previously known as Lougheed Town Centre mall, will be making its exit before the end of the year.

Hudson’s Bay has confirmed the permanent closure of its two-storey department store at the Burnaby mall by December 2023.

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“HBC continually looks at opportunities to optimize its real estate portfolio,” Tiffany Bourre, a spokesperson for Hudson’s Bay, told Daily Hive Urbanized in an email.

“We are committed to treating every associate with respect and fairness through this process, and transfer opportunities will be explored where feasible.”

hudsons bay lougheed town centre burnaby closing

Permanent closure signs inside the Hudson’s Bay store at the City of Lougheed mall. (Carolyn Brito/Submitted)

With this closure, the nearest Hudson’s Bay stores will be Metropolis at Metrotown, Coquitlam Town Centre, and Guildford Town Centre.

However, the Hudson’s Bay location has been on borrowed time ever since Shape Properties created a multi-phased redevelopment master plan of turning the 37-acre mall lot into a high-density, mixed-use residential and commercial district.

The master plan calls for the demolition of the Hudson’s Bay building wing into a section of the mall’s new modern retail and restaurant uses.

Existing condition:

Aerial of the existing condition of the City of Lougheed mall, not including recent progress on the first phase of the redevelopment. (Google Maps)

Future condition:

Artistic rendering of the City of Lougheed master plan. (Shape Properties)

Artistic rendering of the City of Lougheed mall redevelopment. (Shape Properties)

Although Hudson’s Bay is making a retreat from the Lougheed mall, it is set to make a big return to Vancouver’s Oakridge Centre redevelopment, now known as Oakridge Park.

Bourre confirmed the brand-new Hudson’s Bay store at Oakridge Park is still planned. A significant portion of the new Oakridge mall is scheduled to reach completion and open in late 2024.

Hudson’s Bay is also currently in the midst of planning a redevelopment of the heritage flagship store building it owns in downtown Vancouver into a new modern department store with significant office uses.

The closure of Hudson’s Bay at the Lougheed mall follows the permanent closure of the Safeway store in 2018, with the former grocery store space set to be eventually demolished for a portion of the redevelopment’s green space component.

The City of Lougheed’s remaining anchor tenants are now Walmart, London Drugs, and Sport Chek. When the suburban mall first opened in 1969, its original anchor tenants were Hudson’s Bay, Safeway, and Woolco, which was a chain acquired by Walmart.

The first phase of the City of Lougheed mall’s redevelopment is scheduled to reach completion this year. This phase is located at the southeastern corner of the site, entailing four high-rise towers with about 1,600 homes and roughly 90,000 sq ft of retail and restaurant uses within the base podium levels, with about half of the space used as a PriceSmart Foods grocery store.

March 2023 construction progress on the first phase of the City of Lougheed mall redevelopment. (Google Maps)

Artistic rendering of the City of Lougheed’s transit plaza area. (Shape Properties)

Master plan for the City of Lougheed redevelopment of Lougheed Town Centre shopping mall. (Shape Properties)

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