Update: Holt Renfrew in Toronto to Substantially Expand/Renovate

Artist Rendering of 30-60 Bloor St W., Courtesy Morguard Investments Ltd.

Today we were reviewing plans for an expanded/renovated Holt Renfrew flagship store at 50 Bloor Street West in Toronto. Plans include eight (8) levels of Holt Renfrew retail totalling about 200,000-220,000 sq ft, plus four levels / 90,782 square feet for an unknown retailer or retailers (or for Holt Renfrew as well?) and several levels of offices, all under a substantial residential tower.

City planning documents for this project can be viewed here: http://www.toronto.ca/planning/50_bloor.htm

Holt Renfrew Tower Rendering, courtesy City of Toronto Planning Commission

We note store square footages set out at this link: http://www.toronto.ca/planning/pdf/50bloor_architectural-plans.pdf#page=2 and specifically note the size of the newly expanded Holt Renfrew store. From our calculations, the new store will be about 200,000-220,000 square feet. We're basing this on the 'project statistics' on the page above, subtracted some basement non-Holt Renfrew retail, added about 2,000 sq ft of new Holt's basement retail, and added about 3,800 square feet occupied by Holt Renfrew on the ground floor of the 60 Bloor Street West building. We are unsure what will happen to the Holt Renfrew Personal Shopping Suites, awkwardly placed within the 60 Bloor office tower with elevator access from the main store. These add an extra few thousand square feet, if included (and from the plans we don't see them or their dedicated elevator).

Of further interest is a new, four-level retail portion to the project, totalling almost 91,000 square feet of retail. We are unsure if this will belong to Holt Renfrew (making a ~290,000-310,000 sq ft store), or if the space will be for one or more larger retailers.

Finally, the project will include about 78,000 square feet of office space. Could this be the new corporate office headquarters for Holts? 

We will continue to keep you updated, especially since it's starting to look very interesting.

Holt Renfrew website: www.holtrenfrew.com

City of Toronto website: www.toronto.ca

Holt Renfrew Project/Tower planning documents: http://www.toronto.ca/planning/50_bloor.htm

Morguard Investments website: http://www.morguard.com

Courtesy Morguard Investments

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