Yorkdale is doing everything it can to keep a Fairweather store from opening
The mall’s lawyer told a judge that Fairweather would be an unsuitable tenant
The owners of the Yorkdale Shopping Centre really don’t want Fairweather moving into their former Hudson’s Bay location.
In Ontario Superior Court yesterday, Oxford Properties’ lawyer explained to a judge that Yorkdale is a “leading luxury retail destination” and that a proposed department store owned by Fairweather would be an unsuitable tenant for the mall’s prime space.
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According to the Toronto Star, previous court filings show that Oxford has categorized Fairweather’s stores in two other malls as “down-market” and said that a Fairweather opening could result in losses totalling hundreds of millions of dollars over the course of a multi-decade lease.
Fairweather’s representatives argued that the company has plenty of experience running successful retail businesses and noted that it was one of Yorkdale’s earliest tenants, beginning in 1964 and remaining open until its lease expired in 2020.
Isn’t any tenant better than no tenant given the massive space left vacant by the Bay, which filed for creditor protection and closed its stores last year?
“No,” said Oxford’s lawyer, according to the Star. “Having an anchor tenant space vacant with no rent being paid is far better for the shopping centre and its tenants than an unsuitable anchor tenant.”
The court ruling has not yet been released.
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Carly Lewis is a journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times and the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Wired, Interview Magazine, Pitchfork, Elle, and Maclean’s, where she is a contributing editor. Her work has been recognized by the National Magazine Awards and the Digital Publishing Awards. She reports on city life, culture—including what people do online—politics, art and crime. She received the Dave Greber Freelance Writers Award for “The Murder of Ashley Wadsworth,” an investigative feature about a Canadian teenager who was killed by a man she met on social media, published by Maclean’s.
