A children’s play zone, an Asian supermarket, a bustling food court. B.C. billionaire Weihong Liu has revealed new details about her plan to assume more than two dozen Hudson’s Bay leases, and what she has in mind is nothing like the legendary department store Canadians once knew and loved.
Clutching three Hudson’s Bay employee training manuals from 1938, Liu, the petite Chinese entrepreneur, seated in a restaurant at the downtown Toronto Marriott Hotel on Tuesday morning, said in a rare in-person interview with the Star that she understands why the iconic Canadian retailer closed its doors — and that she knows the secret to building something new and successful.
In a candid discussion, the 59-year-old chairwoman of B.C. shopping mall owner Central Walk outlined her next steps after months of touting her plan to acquire Hudson’s Bay in various videos on the Chinese social platform Rednote, and signing a deal with the retailer on May 23 to take over up to 28 of its leases for the launch of “a new modern department store concept.”
Ms. Liu, dressed in a pale pink patterned blouse with a collar and a necklace adorned with tiny diamonds and a heart-shaped red gem, told the Star that the stores she’s targeting won’t be as large as the flagship location next to Toronto’s Eaton Centre, but rather around 150,000 square feet in size — and that she plans to invest as much as $5 million to renovate each one.
“I want to bring to Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, and the cities where my favourite stores are a shopping centre full of dining, entertainment, and experiences that truly connect with people emotionally,” she said in Mandarin.
Apart from the three leases tied to her own shopping centres — Tsawwassen Mills just south of Vancouver, Mayfair Shopping Centre in Victoria, and Woodgrove Centre in Nanaimo — the remaining leases are still subject to landlord consent and court approval.
Liu’s efforts to win over landlords appear to have encountered some hurdles. Court documents reveal that “certain landlords” have submitted letters to Hudson’s Bay outlining their concerns and conditions, while Liu claimed on Tuesday that she has faced “discrimination” and “rude treatment” while seeking consent for the leases she hopes to acquire.
Currently living in an Airbnb apartment in Toronto to facilitate meetings with her legal team and Hudson’s Bay landlords, Liu is expected to seek court approval on June 23 for the reassignment of the three leases on her properties — a transaction valued at $6 million, according to court documents filed Monday.
During the hour-long interview with the Star ahead of Liu’s meeting with her law firm, Liu said she has met with Richard Baker, the chairman of Hudson’s Bay, Saks Fifth Avenue and Saks Off 5th and newly acquired Neiman Marcus, in the U.S., who she said has given her his full support.
All she wanted from him, she said, was to get information about the retailer’s former merchandise vendors. Liu claims Baker responded, ‘I can give it to you — but only if you agree to hire my employees first,’” adding that he said he wants her to operate as many stores as possible. Liu said she offered to buy the Hudson’s Bay downtown Vancouver store in 2019 for $580 million, but her offer was rejected.
The Star reached out to Baker and Hudson’s Bay for comment but did not receive a response by the time of publication.
Liu says she sees Baker as a hardworking person like herself, but believes Hudson’s Bay went out of business because he was trying to run too many companies at once.
“Why did The Bay fail? Because it didn’t value young people. It didn’t create spaces or events for them to gather, nor did it invest and renovate. It was only focused on making money, money, money,” said Liu.
She added that she believes today’s young people are increasingly absorbed in the internet and spending less time in physical spaces, and she hopes her future malls built on Hudson’s Bay leases can change that.
Lui said her plan is to fill her future malls with “fun” activities, such as interactive role-playing games, to attract young people. She pointed to the LED floor at her Woodgrove Mall, which she said has proven popular with families, and that she’s eager to bring more interactive technology to old Hudson’s Bay locations.
In a previous video on Rednote, Liu said she planned to operate the old Hudson’s Bay stores under the name “New Bay.” However, she told the Star she has since changed her mind and now wants to brand them simply as “Ruby Liu.”
For most of her conversation with the Star, Liu spoke with optimism and excitement about her retail ambitions. But when the topic turned to a recent meeting with a landlord, she slammed her coffee cup down on the table in frustration.
Liu said she met with five or six landlords in early June, and most were friendly — but one representative from a major Toronto landlord whom she refused to name was “extremely rude” and “stormed out” after just five or six minutes, making it clear he did not support Liu’s proposal. The Star was not able to independently verify this claim.
“I was treated unfairly and rudely — you could even call it outright discrimination,” Liu said. “They told me I had no experience and no track record.”
She pushed back on that view, arguing that even Hudson’s Bay, despite being founded in 1670 and conducting business for more than 300 years, still ended up shutting down.
What truly matters, she said, is understanding consumers.
“I’m deeply grateful to Canada. I want to give back — to all consumers, to the Canadian people. As a Chinese person, I want to achieve something big,” she said. “I’m not just investing money — I’m investing my energy and effort too.”
