A new chapter in Canadian retail is unfolding as Hudson’s Bay Company ULC has entered into a definitive agreement to assign up to 28 of its store leases in British Columbia, Alberta, and Ontario to a company controlled by billionaire Weihong (Ruby) Liu. The agreement, revealed Friday and confirmed by a press release, marks the first major store footprint acquisition amid the department store chain’s ongoing liquidation under the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act (CCAA).
The leases will be transferred to Ruby Liu Commercial Investment Corp., as the Vancouver-based businesswoman prepares to launch a brand-new department store concept designed to appeal to a broad, multicultural Canadian audience.
Employment opportunities at the new store will be prioritized for former employees of Hudson’s Bay. “This initiative reflects our commitment to supporting individuals and families and contributing to local communities,” Central Walk said in an emailed press release. Additionally, priority will also be given to suppliers and vendors who previously partnered with Hudson’s Bay.
The emailed press release stated, “Under the leadership of Ms. Ruby Liu, Chairwoman of Central Walk, the store locations will be transformed into modern department stores, bridging the gap between generations, providing immersive shopping experiences, and becoming a destination where all age groups thrive together.”
The Company released the following statement from Ms. Liu, translated into English:
“Central Walk Canada is planning to conduct a series of transformative initiatives aimed at fostering intergenerational connections, promoting active lifestyles, and empowering youth through meaningful engagement as part of this transaction.”
“We are evolving to serve Canadians better. We believe every Canadian family deserves a brighter future. Join us in this journey of growth and connection. Together, we can build a more vibrant, caring, and forward-thinking multiculturalist community.”
The press release provides further insight into Central Walk, and the company’s owner’s plans for her new Canadian department store chain. The emailed press release from Central walk noted that the company specializes in the acquisition, development, and management of large-scale retail properties. The release goes on to say that “With a strong business foundation in Southeast Asia, the company has expanded its operations to Canada, aiming to transform traditional shopping centres into inclusive, multifunctional community hubs. The company’s mission emphasizes community engagement and the creation of diverse shopping environments that serve families and integrate retail, dining, entertainment, and cultural experiences.” The same environments are expected to be part of her new Canadian department store chain.
A Landmark Deal in Canadian Retail History
“This is a monumental development,” said Carl Boutet, retail strategist and founder of StudioRx Advisory, in an interview. “We haven’t seen a new department store chain launch at this scale in Canada since Target’s ill-fated expansion over a decade ago. But unlike Target, this concept is homegrown, community-focused, and clearly aims to rewrite what a department store can be.”
Liu’s newly inked deal, which is still subject to court and landlord approval, covers store leases in shopping centres where Hudson’s Bay is in the process of winding down operations. The deal was orchestrated as part of a lease monetization process approved by the Ontario Superior Court of Justice (Commercial List).
In a video posted to Chinese social media platform Rednote, Liu was seen signing the contracts surrounded by staff, counting down aloud before putting pen to paper and erupting into applause. Champagne toasts followed—a staged yet symbolic gesture of what may be a historic shift in the retail landscape.
From Mall Owner to Retail Operator
Liu is no stranger to Canadian retail. Through her company Central Walk, she owns three major shopping centres in British Columbia—Mayfair Centre in Victoria, Woodgrove Centre in Nanaimo, and Tsawwassen Mills near Vancouver. Her transition from landlord to retailer underscores a rare full-circle retail strategy.
“She’s in a very unique position,” noted Boutet. “She knows what it takes to make malls work and has direct experience with leasing, tenant mixes, and foot traffic drivers. That knowledge could prove invaluable as she flips the switch from property manager to anchor tenant.”
Insiders suggest that at least three of the 28 assigned leases are located within Liu’s own malls. “We suspect those were always on her radar,” Boutet added.
A New Kind of Department Store
Unlike Hudson’s Bay’s traditional retail format, Liu’s new concept—still unnamed—will be highly experiential, with immersive elements, a store-in-store format, and a distinctly multicultural approach.
“She’s not trying to recreate the past,” said Boutet. “This will be something very different. Think a hybrid between department store, cultural centre, and experiential marketplace. The goal is to create something joyful and community-driven.”
According to early concept materials shared internally on Rednote, the store will include a mix of fashion, beauty, small-format groceries, and food service. “We’re talking about a space that could host cosplay events, 5D theatres, and virtual reality zones,” said Boutet, referencing Liu’s existing activations at Tsawwassen Mills. “This is more than shopping—it’s entertainment, community building, and cultural engagement.”
Brand Building from the Ground Up
Unlike other bidders in the Hudson’s Bay restructuring process, Liu did not pursue the brand’s intellectual property. That portfolio—including the HBC name, logo, and trademarks—was acquired last week by Canadian Tire Corporation for $30 million.
As a result, Liu’s venture will be launching from scratch.
“She’s going to need to build brand awareness from zero,” said Boutet. “But there’s a strong grassroots foundation already forming in certain communities—especially Chinese and multicultural segments that follow her on Rednote. Word of mouth will be crucial in the early days.”
While Liu is active on Chinese social media, her team is likely planning a broader marketing push across platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and Meta. “I’d expect them to start showing up in Canadian mainstream media soon,” Boutet said.
A Race Against the Clock
The path ahead won’t be easy. Court documents show that 62 Hudson’s Bay leases failed to receive any qualified bids. Liu’s deal is the most expansive of the 12 qualified bids for 39 leases, and with it comes pressure to activate spaces quickly.
“She now holds the keys to over two dozen massive retail boxes,” Boutet emphasized. “But as soon as Hudson’s Bay is out, she’s on the hook for those rents. That means rapid store build-outs, fixturing, staffing, and activating the space—some with food services and immersive experiences that take time and capital.”
He added, “This isn’t like just stocking shelves. She’s talking about full-scale food operations and experiential zones. And many of these stores need renovations. Some piecemeal, some major.”
Landlords and Legal Hurdles Still Ahead
The next step will be securing landlord consents. Each lease transfer requires approval from individual landlords, some of whom may need convincing—particularly if the proposed use veers away from traditional department store functions.
“Technically, these are being called department stores, which helps fit lease clauses,” Boutet explained. “But landlords also care about viability. They want tenants that will drive traffic and stay solvent.”
Given Liu’s dual role as both landlord and now prospective anchor tenant, some negotiations may be smoother than others. “She knows how to speak their language,” Boutet said.
The Bigger Picture for Canadian Retail
The Canadian retail sector has not seen a player enter the field at this scale since pre-Target days. Liu’s simultaneous bid for 28 stores, mostly concentrated in urban and suburban malls, could fill a significant gap left by Hudson’s Bay and Nordstrom exits.
“This could be the most significant retail startup in Canadian history if she succeeds,” said Boutet. “She’s showing what bold investment in brick-and-mortar can look like—even at a time when everyone is talking about online and AI.”
According to court documents, 17 total bids were received for Hudson’s Bay assets, but Liu is the first to secure a definitive agreement. No details have yet emerged on who will take over the remaining leases.
What Comes Next
Hudson’s Bay plans to complete its liquidation by the end of May. Liu’s lease agreement must receive court approval by May 30. Until then, all eyes are on what will follow this monumental step.
“Retailers across Canada are watching this very closely,” said Boutet. “Because if this works, it won’t just fill a void—it could redefine department stores for a new generation.”
A Calculated Gamble
Though critics may question the feasibility of launching 28 stores in one fell swoop, Liu’s track record as a developer and businesswoman suggests calculated ambition. “This is not someone who’s just throwing money at a trend,” Boutet concluded. “She’s made it this far by taking smart risks. And if she pulls this off, it’ll go down as one of the most impressive retail turnarounds in Canadian history.”
Whether Liu’s new chain becomes a cornerstone of modern Canadian retail or another ambitious footnote remains to be seen. But one thing is clear: the death of the department store may be overstated—and Ruby Liu may be its most unlikely revivalist.
Once again she only posts on a Chinese site, why is she not communicating to the vast majority of this country to explain what her plans are? It’s becoming a tad insulting, as this would never happen or be tolerated in China.
Is my comment racist? No, it’s just insulting that she wont communicate in any of Canada’s official languages
Hi Robert, thanks for your share. Ms. Liu’s team has been sharing updates in both English and Chinese. Like many business leaders, she prefers to wait until deals are finalized before making full public statements.
Ms. Liu has lived and worked in Canada for many years. She currently operates three Canadian shopping centres and maintains strong ties with local communities and governments.
We understand your concern and appreciate your interest. More details will be shared publicly as the project progresses.
I am very excited to see this concept. I hope Sherway Gardens is on the list. Canadian Retail is so boring. It needs a fresh approach and its really great that a very successful business person from China has decided to invest in Canada. Best of luck Ruby!!! I can’t wait to visit your store!!
On top of that, This really sounds like target 2.0 she just bought the leases nothing else I bet these won’t go anywhere or be very short lived
She just bought the properties and Canadian Tire bought the branding which is great for Canada because you have a Canadian company keeping the history alive and an experienced woman trying to recreate the former spaces into something unique to Canada to get with the changing times. Let her get her stuff together more than enough information has been shared in English. The only people complaining should be the French.
The French , as the English across the pond, for that matter, don’t care much what happens in BC and Ontario ;-). Joking aside, as a Quebecer (what used to be called a Canadian, and then, a French-Canadian), I am not insulted. In fact, it is interesting to see the narrative being flipped, as the English-speaking Canadians increasingly face a linguistic and cultural steamroller. Ms. Liu has decided not to come to Quebec, where most French-speaking people live, in Canada. It is probably a good idea, as her philosophy would go directly against our basic right and will to function and thrive as a French-speaking society in North America. This can only work by including all people who live here, wherever their other cultural affiliations may lie. We certainly don’t need another front in the culture wars in Quebec. Good luck to the people in the ROC.
Hi Robert, thanks for your comment. Ms. Liu’s team has been sharing updates in both English and Chinese. Like many business leaders, she prefers to wait until deals are finalized before making full public statements.
Ms. Liu has lived and worked in Canada for many years. She currently operates three Canadian shopping centres and maintains strong ties with local communities and governments.
We understand your concern and appreciate your interest. More details will be shared publicly as the project progresses.
With a recession looming, this is not going to fly well. I think solid landlords will prefer taking a hit right now and redevelopment spaces
Redevelop the Hudson’s Bay spaces exactly how? There are no major retail tenants other than Liu’s group, anxious to get their hands on this amount of space in major Canadian malls. Landlords at Canadian malls have spent years digesting the mass of empty premises put on the market after the Target, Sears and Nordstrom Canada bankruptcies. It’s safe to say that the tenants who were previously trying to get into major malls are now there, having already taken former Target or Sears space. Landlords can imagine redeveloping Hudson’s Bay space all they want–there’s nobody else lined up to occupy those premises. It’s Liu or nobody.
For the car?
Hopefully there is an actual plan here. Holding up a 8.5 x 11 piece of bond paper with a “logo’ that at best looks amateurish doesn’t give me much faith that we will even see one store built out let alone 28. If you are doing something radically different why tie it to a brand that failed and someone else actually owns now. “New Bay” is uninspiring at best. Quite willing to proved wrong but this just seems like a vanity project with no actual substance behind it.
Very nice to see someone taking an interest in reviving and old company and progressing it to the future.
Bruce, I don’t think you fully understand, Ms. Liu is only (attempting) to acquire the space currently/formerly occupied by The Bay. The intellectual property, i.e. the names The Bay, Zellers, The Hudson’s Bay, the trademark colours that adorned blankets and the like, even the coat of arms has all be acquired by Canadian Tire. Ms. Liu is only trying to lock down the rights to occupying the soon to be vacated properties and reopen them with her own concept of an entertainment destination retailer with a curated selection of products and services to attract customers. This is NOT a rebranding or resurrection of The Bay and it is unlikely that Canadian Tire would allow her to use ‘The Bay’ or anything similar as an identity for the new business.
I am very interested in what Ms. Liu and her team will do. From what I read there were only about 20 profitable HBC stores, so hopefully she got the best locations. I spent thousands per year at the Bay and I am curious how many brands she will get and how much if any of my spending she will get.
I am hopeful for this project as she seems very successful and her malls in BC seem to be doing well – she is a Billionaire :)!
For the comments about her lack of communications in English, she is likely most comfortable thinking and expressing herself in Mandarin. To be fair, she owns a private company and she doesn’t have to tell us anything. Canadian Tire is public (albeit with a controlling shareholder), they have said nothing in either English or French about what their plans are for HBC.
As a former shareholder of HBC and a dedicated shopper at HBC, I hope Canadian Tire will license or sell a HBC brand name to Ms. Liu to keep the legacy of HBC as a trading post / store going and not just the stripes products.
Actually she does need to talk to the public, especially now that shes looking to open up a new Department store chain with locations in half of Canada that she wants people to spend their money at.
As for Canadian Tire, they haven’t been all over social media for the past few months about their “plans” for Hudson’s Bay. Unlike Lui, who Mandarin may be her preferred language, but you start to alienate your “future” customers if you wont communicate to them in English, as it appears she only has an interest to operate in predominantly English speaking part of the country
It sounds as if she is trying to create a old fashioned street shopping area inside a building. It should work.
I guess the prairies and atlantic Canada don’t exist in Ms Liu’s world? While I applaud the chance she’s taking, I think this whole concept is completely missing the mark in the retail environment that is Canada. Having worked for many retailers in marketing and merchandising, they want their brand exactly the same in every location coast to coast right down to marketing, they are completely missing the opportunity to target their base by location. I have NEVER understood why you think what works in one city will work in every city? Isn’t the whole reason you hire managers, regional managers etc to KNOW their region and what sells and push those products? Canada is such a diverse set of cultures, climates not to mention seasons that it simply does not work with a ONE-FOR-ALL approach to marketing. Every store can be made successful just by targeting your known customer. Don’t alienate your existing customer trying to find new markets that may not exist. Even within cities, the same brand sells differently in every location. Use the knowledge of those ON the floor IN the store to make you successful.
The critiques of Liu’s proposal are very odd. When Target Corporation, a massive retailer with significant resources, entered Canada in 2013, it was heavily criticized for attempting to do too much too soon, trying to set up a coast-to-coast operation from the get-go. Shortly thereafter, the company failed (for this and other reasons). Now Liu comes along and has been very strategic in the locations she has chosen. She’s not trying to build a national retailer or a replacement for HBC, she’s simply selecting a handful of sites where she thinks her concept will work. Unlike Target, she’s trying not to bite off more than she can chew—-and yet she’s still being criticized!
Liu sounds like she’s being very realistic about the markets which are likely to be receptive to her new operation. Something that will work in Richmond Centre in B.C. or Yorkdale or West Edmonton Mall is unlikely to achieve similar success at, say, the Mic Mac Mall in Dartmouth.
Sometimes you have to give up on a dieing breed of shopping in brick and mortar it is a coming recession in the near future not time to think people wants to walk in malls and waste time just wait for another covid or worse it will wipe whatever mall is left
How can this deal exclude some of the best Bay locations? There’s a reason why some stores were excluded from the liquidation sale (initially)…They were the most profitable of the chain. Two of those stores are located in the Montreal region, and Ms Liu’s project obviously won’t include Quebec. To my eye, this is a major red flag. Name a major retail store chain that is successful in Canada without involving Quebec? They all failed, to my knowledge.
I think the Quebec language police would be a nightmare for an entrepreneur who’s first language is Mandarin. I’m English and speak some French and even I would have stayed away (I love Quebec, but not the laws).
Canada has two official languages : English and French. This could not be a more fundamental trait of our great country, dating all the way back to how it got started. Any business with a minimum of ambition that doesn’t have the bandwidth to respect and accomodate that is a failed experiment in Canada. The Quebec language police is not perfect, for sure, but it absolutely is possible to do business in Quebec in full respect of the law and it’s not that hard to do (especially for a start-up that builds it all from scratch). Ask Staples (which elegantly renamed itself for the Quebec market when it entered the market), or many others. I fully expect an entrepreneur that will probably use ChatGPT to translate most things to English to also be able to translate things to French in a similar way… it’s 2025 after all!
Did you consider the fact that Quebec has a very successful department store with the home-field advantage? Liu is actually quite smart to avoid going up against Simons on its own territory.
F T, I can name at least two very successful retail chains in Canada which have never operated stores in Quebec: Save-on-Foods (177 stores from Vancouver Island to Winnipeg) and London Drugs (80 stores from Victoria to Winnipeg). Not every business needs a Quebec presence to be relevant. Many companies compete very successfully in their own niche without overextending themselves.
This still will not help or compensate the over 9 000 employees who are out of a job on June 1st 2025. Whether it is Miss Liu, Canadian Tire or even DisneyWorld all of the staff are now out of work. Many are long-term employees and ALL without severance. As we all know, money talks…..but not for us. Frances. HBC employee.
I’m sending my best to former HBC employees looking for new jobs.
Then find a other job at another brand or company. That’s why EI exists until you find something better. There are plenty of other places to work that would take former. Plus whatever Canadian Tire and Miss Liu do with the former brand and sites should open up new opportunities. Look I just lost my job too but complaining about what we all saw coming doesn’t help. It took a visit to any Hudson Bay to see the downward spiral. There are 80000 jobs available on the Job search website so do something else for a while.
So…which stores?
The list will be released when the court gives a green light.
I wonder if these NEW BAY locations will also have Starbucks inside!
This is good news. We get a new retail concept and the bay employees get their jobs back. I can’t wait to see what this looks like!
Here’s my hope for these large department stores. Escalators that work, elevators in central part of the stores, washrooms on all levels and shopping carts. And please oh please have clerks or concierge staff offering help. As well as not racks upon racks like it’s a winners, because that is no fun. I’m trying to offer some solid constructive feedback here.
I send all the luck and good wishes to Liu, but I do have one very big, very sincere & very important question.
Are you planning for your clothing depts to cater to only those who fit into a size 2 (max) with a ton of money, or will you be carrying merchandise to fit the Plus sized Canadian consumers of all ages & income brackets as well?
The whole thing sounds so wiz bang tacky to me. “And cars that fly through the air”. Lol. Mention AI this and that and throw in a couple of things like “interactive”, “virtual”, etc. Give me a break. The buildings will not get properly upgraded (some of the Hudson Bay buildings were apparently neglect for decades) and the glitz will become tiresome and fail in no time.
I wouldn’t be too quick to judge, only because the Ruby Liu retail concept has not been fully developed. I’m currently more familiar with the food and beverage plans, and these would be surprisingly elevated in partnership with a world-class F&B operator. I’ll be able to report more after a court hearing tentatively set for June 23.