Holt Renfrew will open a 120,000 square foot store at Mississauga's Square One Shopping Centre. The store will go at the south-end of the mall as part of an ongoing expansion and renovation of Ontario's largest shopping Centre. We will provide the store's exact location when we are permitted. The store tentatively opens in the spring of 2016.

On March 17th we reported on the ongoing negotiations between Holt Renfrew and Oxford Properties' Square One Shopping Centre. The deal is done and the announcement is now public.

This is the latest announcement in Holt Renfrew's $300 million Canadian expansion that will see its retail footprint expanded by about 40%.

In July 2012 we reported that Holt Renfrew would open a 102,000 square foot store at Toronto's Sherway Gardens. Negotiations have stalled and we are retracting the Holt Renfrew Sherway Gardens announcement. Holt Renfrew will exit Sherway Gardens entirely for the Square One store about 3.5 times the size (Sherway's Holt Renfrew is 33,670 square feet, according to Sherway's current lease plan).

Not all is lost for Sherway Gardens, however, as it has managed to secure a 138,000 square foot Nordstrom store scheduled to open autumn 2016.

This gives Holt Renfrew three large Greater Toronto Area stores. Holt Renfrew's Bloor Street flagship store is about 185,000 square feet and it Yorkdale Shopping Centre store will soon expand to over 121,000 square feet. The Mississauga location will be one of Holt Renfrew's largest stores when it opens, surpassed only by the Bloor Street (~185,000 sq ft), Calgary (151,000 sq ft) and Vancouver (137,200 sq ft) stores (note: Only about 120,000 sq ft of the Calgary store is currently in use).

Holt Renfrew joins Anchors Hudson's Bay (191,000 sq ft), Sears (145,000 sq ft), Target (164,000 sq ft) and Walmart (almost 245,000 sq ft) at Square One.

Landlord Cadillac Fairview published a tentative leaseplan of its Sherway Gardens showing an expanded Holt Renfrew store. The leaseplan has multiple errors and will have to be significantly modified now that Holt Renfrew will exit Sherway.

Current Square One floorplan: Screenshot from Square One website

We previously reported on Square One's $84 million mall expansion and renovation. We also recently reported on Top Shop opening within a substantially renovated Hudson's Bay department store. Holt Renfrew's announcement secures Square One's position as one of Greater Toronto's top shopping destinations.

Thank you to our Retail Insider Jamie Colden for alerting us to this press release.

More big changes are coming to Mississauga's Square One Shopping Centre and we'll be providing updates. Have an excellent weekend and thank you for reading Retail Insider.

Holt Renfrew website: www.HoltRenfrew.com

Square One Shopping Centre website: http://www.shopsquareone.com