The flagship Hudson’s Bay store at Queen & Yonge Streets in Toronto will see two substantially renovated men’s floors (one of them ‘new’) and a main-floor women’s shoe floor. The men’s offerings will be on lower and second-levels, while an expanded women’s shoe department will be re-located to the west-end of the store’s ground floor, replacing menswear/accessories.

The Queen Street store’s ‘current layout’ has menswear located mostly on the western-portion of the store’s second-level as well as part of the western-portion of the store’s ground-floor. Women’s shoes are located at the eastern-end of the second-floor. The basement includes some home furnishings and a 5,000 square foot food retail concession called ‘Foodwares Market‘.

The ‘new layout’ will see things moved around a bit. Part of the store’s basement/’PATH’ level will be converted to men’s shirts/ties and the store’s ‘less-expensive’ menswear offerings, while the store’s second-floor will include an expanded selection of men’s shoes and the men’s designer departments called ‘White Space’ and ‘West End Shop’. Men’s TopMan, already located on the second-level, will remain. The 5,000 sq ft Foodwares Market in the basement will remain.

The second-floor men’s store will be renovated to look similar to the sixth-floor men’s store at Hudson’s Bay in Downtown Vancouver. We previously reported on our approval of Vancouver’s men’s floor renovation. The image below is also from the Vancouver store.

The western-portion of the store’s ground-floor will be converted to women’s shoes. A sales associate informs us the new women’s shoe floor will include expanded offerings and more designers. Ground-floor women’s shoe departments have become popular and desirable in department stores. Women’s shoes are big business and provide retailers high margins. Holt Renfrew‘s Caryn Lerner is quoted as saying “It was a dream of ours to have a shoe department on the main floor and, after years, we think we finally got it right,” with the opening of Holt Renfrew’s main-floor women’s shoe department in Calgary in 2009. [Link to Globe & Mail article here].

All three department stores in Beverly Hills include main-floor shoe departments (Barneys, Saks and Neiman Marcus), for example. Each were buzzing with activity upon a recent visit. Seattle’s flagship Nordstrom store also includes a ground-floor shoe department that does ‘gangbuster’ sales according to a source.

The 850,000 square foot Queen Street Hudson’s Bay store has been undergoing interior renovations since 2008. The store’s third-floor saw the introduction of the 21,500 sq ft women’s designer department called ‘The Room’ in October 2009. A large women’s contemporary department called ‘White Space’ followed, as well as a substantially renovated accessories department on the ground floor with Coach and Burberry boutiques. Sources tell us the entire Queen Street store will hopefully be ‘competely renovated’ in the next 12-18 months.

We will provide more details of the new men’s floors and women’s shoe floors when they become available. 

Hudson’s Bay website: www.TheBay.com