It’s the end of the line for the Zellers store in the East York Town Centre on Overlea Blvd. The venerable bargain house will close its doors for good next Monday, June 18, 2012. From then on, the premises will be on a time line to re-open sometime in 2013 as a new Target store. Today the place is a pitiable sight. Empty shelves and dirty floors, escalators shut down and staff looking sad. Employees must re-apply with Target in order to be considered for a job at the new store.
Target Corporation has announced the first 24 Zellers locations to be converted into Target stores. As previously revealed, one of them is the Zellers in the East York Town Centre on Thorncliffe Park Drive. The new stores are slated to be ready by March or early April 2013. That would seem to mean that the stores will be closed with renovations underway during the 2012 Christmas season. Target says it will spend approximately $10 million to $11 million to remodel each store “in order to bring the full Target brand experience to Canadian communities.” Target says it will employ 150 to 200 associates in each store. “Store team hiring will begin in 2012 and Target will engage with Zellers associates to make it easy for them to apply for jobs.” Others can apply to Target by visiting www.Target.ca/careers.
The Zellers in the East York Town Centre on Overlea Blvd is slated to be among the first six stores in Toronto that are converted to the Target brand. Suspense has been high since Target purchased the leases to Zellers stores earlier this year. The U.S. retailer will sell off some of those stores. But it appears that the local Zellers will be converted to a Target in the near future. More here. 
Employees of Zellers in the Thorncliffe Park Shopping Mall are hanging on for any bit of information which will tell them of their fate and that of their store. Zellers parent Hudson Bay, has sold rights to the leases of as many as 220 Zellers stores to the U.S. retailer Target. It will spend more than $1-billion to convert 100 to 150 of them to its own banner within the next two to three years. In the meantime, employees wait and wonder. They do know that as part of the deal, the store will continue to operate through 2011. A Bay spokesperson said: “During this time, Target will be determining which locations will open as a Target store, which locations may be sold to another retailer and which will remain as Zellers. We will continue to operate a portfolio of Zellers stores in some communities in Canada. No decisions have been made on specific locations at this time.” In other words, the Zellers name may live on in cut down form. The Thorncliffe store is a sad reflection of its former self. The coming months are not likely to see any upgrades.
It certainly didn’t take long for the news to come out about Target stores grabbing the leased locations of Zellers. The Globe and Mail says today that the U.S. general merchandise giant will take 220 locations accros Canada for some 1.8 billion.
