Quebec City-based retailer La Maison Simons has announced that it will open two stores in Toronto in the fall of 2025. One will be downtown at the CF Toronto Eaton Centre and the other at the Yorkdale Shopping Centre. It’s part of a $75 million investment by Simons that will see the retailer further penetrate the Canadian market with a presence in the largest and wealthiest city in the country.
Bernard Leblanc, CEO of Simons, said that the lease deals to open the two Toronto stores were “decades in the making”, and that the opportunity to finally open in those malls was made possible following Nordstrom’s exit from Canada. The large retail boxes with expansive floor plates became available following Nordstrom’s closure last year, providing landlords the opportunity to secure Simons and other retailers as a tenants.
The CF Toronto Eaton Centre La Maison Simons store will span about 110,000 square feet over three levels, featuring local art and unique architectural designs by Lemay Michaud and Gensler Design. Leblanc said in an interview that the store’s access points will include a street entrance on Yonge Street as well as access from within a new corridor in the mall, which will run through the former 223,000 square foot Nordstrom store that once occupied the space. Simons will also occupy a small portion of the 63,800 square foot second floor of the Nordstrom space, with most of the remainder to be occupied by Eataly, which will measure about 25,000 square feet over two floors. Most of the 90,000 square foot third floor of the former Nordstrom will be occupied by Simons, as well as some new storage space for landlord Cadillac Fairview.
A two level Nike flagship store spanning about 18,000 square feet will open in the remainder of the former Nordstrom space. SAJO is the design-build firm that will be responsible for the construction.
The Yorkdale La Maison Simons store will span about 118,000 square feet, and will also feature unique artwork and architectural designs by Lemay Michaud and Gensler. Simons will occupy the first two levels of the former Nordstrom store, which had expansive floor plates exceeding 60,000 square feet each. It’s not yet known what landlord Oxford Properties will do with the third level of the former Nordstrom space. Leblanc said that “sun” will be a central theme to the Yorkdale store, which makes sense — the purpose-built 188,000 square foot Nordstrom box features walls of glass including on its south-facing facade, which means the Yorkdale Simons store has the opportunity to be flooded by sunlight depending on its design.
Leblanc said that the design of both stores is now in the works, with details to come — Simons stores feature unique and often whimsical interiors, such as dressing rooms that look like outhouses and deer heads with antlers covered in fabric. Each Simons store also features at least one key piece of large artwork, and Simons has yet to decide what will be installed in the two new Toronto stores.
Both stores will offer the full range of Simons merchandise, which includes fashions for men and women, kid’s, home goods, footwear, bags, accessories and other items. About 70% of the product in Simons stores is private, made under various labels including the names of the departments in the stores. That includes Twik and La Contemporaine for women, and Le 31 and Djab for men.
Both the CF Toronto Eaton Centre and Yorkdale Simons stores will also feature separate designer ‘Edito’ departments for women and men, which feature a range of pricey luxury brands that can be far more costly than Simons’ relatively affordable private labels. Brands in Simons’ Edito department include names such as Balmain, Chloé, DSquared2, Emporio Armani, Erdem, Helmut Lang, JW Anderson, Jacquemus, Marni, Moschino, Rick Owens, Vivienne Westwood, Yohji Yamamoto and others. The selection of brands at Edito departments in Simons varies store-to-store, and Leblanc said it’s not yet determined which brands will be carried in the CF Toronto Eaton Centre and Yorkdale Simons locations.
The Toronto stores could become the top-selling locations for the company, with La Maison Simons estimating that sales at the two locations could be in the $100 million range combined — currently Simons’ total annual sales are in excess of $650 million, with two thirds of those (about $430 million) being in its 17 physical stores and the remainder being online. Currently the top-selling Simons stores in the chain are the Place Ste-Foy (Quebec City) and downtown Montreal flagships.
Simons says it’s spending more than $75 million to build the new Toronto stores, which will create about 400 jobs. While the investment is significant, so is the expected return — with the sales projections of the two Toronto stores, physical retail sales are expected to rise to over half a billion dollars annually after they open next year.
Toronto was specifically targeted, according to Leblanc, because it’s the second largest online market in Canada for Simons. The Toronto area was vastly under-served by La Maison Simons, with just one store at Square One in Mississauga. The Montreal market, which is smaller and less affluent than Toronto, is home to five productive Simons stores, he noted. The Square One store also saw a 3% increase in sales in its fiscal year — and while the store has helped somewhat to increase brand awareness for Simons in the GTA, its location was too remote for most who live in the region and frequent other malls.
CF Toronto Eaton Centre is possibly the busiest shopping centre in the world, with over 50 million annual visitors and a location in the heart of busy downtown Toronto. The complex is located on subway and streetcar lines and is adjacent to sometimes chaotic Dundas Square, which was recently rebranded as Sankofa Square (a name that the majority of Torontonians seem to dislike). CF Toronto Eaton Centre recently ranked second in the 2023 Top 25 Malls by Sales Per Square Foot in Canada, with a productivity number of $1,457 per square foot for reporting retailers. The massive centre was originally anchored by an 800,000 square foot Eaton’s store, which operated there from 1977 until 1999, and then Sears Canada until Cadillac Fairview bought back the space in 2012 to convert into Nordstrom and office uses.
Yorkdale isn’t nearly as busy as CF Toronto Eaton Centre, though it sees millions of visitors a year and boasted sales per square foot of $2,402 in 2023, according to the same ICSC study. The mall is a powerhouse of big-name and luxury brands, with the largest single clustering of standalone luxury stores in the country. Landlord Oxford Properties has invested heavily into the shopping centre, including recent updates to its food court and the construction of a luxury wing which involved relocating various retailers in the mall’s centre run.
The Toronto Simons stores will be the 18th and 19th locations for the retailer. In March of 2024, La Maison Simons unveiled a store at the Halifax Shopping Centre in Halifax, which Leblanc noted brought the chain “truly coast-to-coast”. Over the past five years, Simons have invested hundreds of millions of dollars into its operations, including opening a store in the Montreal suburb of Pointe-Claire in May of 2022, and investment into an automated fulfilment centre in Quebec City.
La Maison Simons was founded in 1840, and it wasn’t until 12 years ago that the retailer expanded outside of Quebec. In October of 2012, Simons opened at West Edmonton Mall, kicking off a national expansion for the retailer that saw it open stores in various major markets. That included Park Royal in West Vancouver (2015), Square One in Mississauga (2016), CF Rideau Centre in downtown Ottawa (2016), The CORE in downtown Calgary (2017), Londonderry Mall in Edmonton (2017), and most recently in Halifax.
During that same expansion period, Simons expanded within Quebec with stores at Galeries d’Anjou in Montreal (2013), Promenades Gatineau near Ottawa (2015), Galeries de la Capitale in Quebec City (2018), and CF Fairview Pointe-Claire (2022). They joined existing stores in Quebec that include the company headquarters and retail space in Old Quebec, and stores in Ste-Foy, downtown Montreal, Sherbrooke, St-Bruno, and Laval.
Bernard Leblanc said that it was a privilege to work out of the Old Quebec offices, where Simons has had a store and offices since 1870. The Old Quebec Simons store is still popular and features unique architecture in a heritage space.
Last year when Retail Insider first broke the news of Nordstrom’s exit from Canada, we also speculated that La Maison Simons could replace some of the retail space being vacated by the Seattle-based retailer. Leblanc said that this early speculation by us and others didn’t factor heavily into negotiations with Cadillac Fairview and Oxford Properties, both of which wanted Simons as tenants following Nordstrom’s Canadian exit. Simons had actually been speaking to both landlords years before, and had intended to open stores at both malls but at the time, deals did not materialize.
That includes in 2015, when Simons’ then CEO Peter Simons told the Montreal Gazette that the retailer would open Toronto stores at Yorkdale and Scarborough Town Centre. Neither deal materialized at the time, with Simons instead opening stores in other markets. Several years ago Peter Simons told Retail Insider in an interview that CF Toronto Eaton Centre was specifically a target for a Simons store at some point, as well.
Leblanc wouldn’t confirm rumours that La Maison Simons would open a downtown Vancouver store in part of the 230,000 square foot three-level Nordstrom building that was once home to an Eaton’s store. Sources had told Retail Insider that there was a possibility that La Maison Simons could take part of the former Nordstrom space at CF Pacific Centre, along with other retailers. We’ll follow up on this story when we learn more.
Love this newsletter so much! Best information and well written.
Thank you Val! 🙂
I’m keping my fingers crossed for (La Maison) Simons to come to Winnipeg next.
I spoke to Bernard about the Winnipeg market, and I noted that Polo Park is likely the only appropriate location for Simons. There are no immediate plans for a Winnipeg store according to him, but it could happen some day. I suspect downtown Vancouver will be the focus of the next store announcement for Simons, and then Winnipeg after that, if Cadillac Fairview can work out a deal for the right space configuration at Polo Park.
It’s all Hudson’s Bay can do to keep the lights on and the escalators and elevators working, even in their “flagship” stores. Meanwhile, La Maison Simon’s continues its steady advance across English Canada. These latest openings in Toronto seem practically inevitable, they make so much sense. Simon’s is in a good position to pick up the slack from Nordstrom as well as The Bay. The high streets and the malls from the Atlantic to the Pacific need the department store from Quebec as much as it needs new territory to grow: a commercial real estate marriage made in heaven. As mentioned in the report, considering that Simon’s five locations in Greater Montreal alone are profitable, the company should flourish in Greater Toronto, a larger, more affluent market. I wonder if anyone is studying Simon’s to see how they survive in the age of the dying mid-market department store.