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Giant Canadian Tire opening at Hillside, two others to close

The new Canadian Tire store in Hillside Centre will be the second largest in Canada when it opens in November — but it will come at the cost of closing two locations.
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The new Canadian Tire store in Hillside Centre will be the second largest in Canada when it opens in November.

The new Canadian Tire store in Hillside Centre will be the second largest in Canada when it opens in November — but it will come at the cost of closing two locations.

Officials said Wednesday the Douglas Street store will close in November, just before the opening at Hillside. The company earlier announced its Gordon Head location will shut its retail section on Saturday, although the automotive garage will remain open.

The Hillside Centre store will carry every Canadian Tire product available in 93,500 square feet of retail space on the ground floor and on part of the upper level, store general manager Greg Honour said Wednesday.

The rest of the second-floor space will be used as a warehouse and offices, Honour said.

The entire building is slightly less than 140,000 square feet, Honour said.

Canadian Tire’s biggest store has nearly 140,000 square feet of space dedicated to retail in South Edmonton Common.

Franchise store owner Justin Young and Honour moved to Victoria as part of a team of seven managers from Waterloo, Ont., this year to operate the Douglas Street store while setting up the new location.

Honour is optimistic about Hillside, saying there is a lot of foot traffic and no competition close by. “We have no doubt that we are moving into a very strong neighbourhood.”

Workers are renovating and filling space left empty when U.S.-based Target shut its doors in 2014 after admitting its foray north was a financial failure.

All 50 staff at the Douglas Street store, which has 24,000 square feet of retail space, will move to Hillside, Honour said. Several other staff at the 12,000-square-foot Gordon Head store will be coming over to Hillside as well, he said, but didn’t provide specific numbers.

The automotive service centre at the Gordon Head store will stay where it is and be a satellite of the Hillside store, Honour said. The Hillside store will carry automotive products, but will not perform vehicle repairs and service.

About 130 staff will work at the new store, rising to 150 during the peak shopping seasons, he said.

Canadian Tire’s Hillside store is designed for customer service and convenience, Honour said.

Unlike the Douglas Street store where products are stacked high up on shelves, shelves in the new store will be lower to give customers easier access to products, Honour said.

The Douglas Street store now carries about 35,000 products. The new store will carry up to 10,000 to 15,000 additional items, he said.

Higher-end products will no longer be locked away behind glass. Instead, customers will pick up a tag with a barcode to be scanned on the way out and customer service will have the item ready to pick up. A VIP exit will allow those shoppers to go straight outside, Honour said.

The escalator, which had originally faced the rear of the store, has been turned around so that customers will be able go directly upstairs, Honour said.

The ground floor will include housewares, hardware and seasonal items. The upper floor will carry seasonal children’s products, sporting goods, bicycles, an expanded fishing department and kayaks and canoes.

No word is available yet on what will happen to the retail space in Gordon Head, or to the Douglas Street building, both owned by Canadian Tire, Honour said.