2 Bloor East | |
---|---|
Former names | Hudson's Bay Centre |
General information | |
Address | 2 Bloor Street East Toronto, Ontario M4W 1A8 |
Coordinates | 43°40′15″N79°23′12″W / 43.670724°N 79.386606°W |
Construction started | 1972 |
Completed | 1974 |
Height | |
Roof | 135 m (443 ft) |
Technical details | |
Floor count | 35 |
Floor area | 535,000 sq ft (49,700 m2) |
2 Bloor East [1] [2] is an office and retail complex in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, formerly known as the Hudson's Bay Centre. It is located in Downtown Toronto at the intersection of Yonge Street and Bloor Street at the east end of the Mink Mile. Brookfield Properties owns and operates the centre. The centre is composed of a 35-storey office tower and a retail concourse. From its opening in 1974 until 2022 it had a Hudson's Bay department store as its anchor store.
The tower stands at 135 metres in height. It contains 35 floors and 535,000-square-foot (49,700 m2), and its address 2 Bloor Street East, at the northeast corner of the intersection of Yonge and Bloor Streets. The extensive retail concourse was anchored by a flagship store of Hudson's Bay/The Bay (known as the "Toronto, on Bloor Street" store at 44 Bloor Street East, the main brand of HBC. The mall contains over 45 specialty shops, boutiques, services and eateries.
The complex includes a hotel tower, opened in 1976 as the Hotel Plaza II, a sister hotel of the nearby Park Plaza Hotel. The hotel suffered a deadly fire in 1982. [3] It was later renamed the Toronto Marriott Bloor Yorkville Hotel. It closed in 2019 for major renovations and reopened in 2022 as the W Toronto Hotel. [4]
The complex also has an RBC Royal Bank branch, a Jack Astor's Bar and Grill, apartments, and condominiums.
The centre has space for 1,200 cars in its underground and above-ground parking lots, multiple entrances located on Yonge, Bloor Streets, Park Road and Asquith Avenue and is surrounded by several parks and the Yorkville neighborhood which is known for upscale shopping.
The building is connected to the Bloor–Yonge subway station, the TTC's major east-west/north-south transfer point. There are also below-grade connections to the Holt Renfrew Centre and Cumberland Terrace, which continues westward to 60 Bloor Street West and Manulife Centre. The pedestrian tunnels stretches along Bloor Street West to the Bay subway station, making this Toronto's largest underground network after PATH.
Completed in 1974, the International style office skyscraper has served as the headquarters for the retailer Hudson's Bay Company (HBC). The company remained the main tenant until 2022, although the company relocated its head office to the Simpson Tower in 1978. The department store opened with the tower and was the first location of The Bay within the former city of Toronto. [5] It overtook the Winnipeg location to become the flagship branch of The Bay (despite being actually smaller in size than the former) and maintained this distinction until the conversion in 1991 of the larger Simpsons store also located in Toronto. [6]
In 2013, it was announced that the 342,000 square feet (31,800 m2) Hudson's Bay/The Bay store could undergo a CA$100 million renovation to become the Canadian flagship location of Saks Fifth Avenue, the American luxury department store chain which is now also owned by Hudson's Bay Company (HBC). [7] However, it was subsequently announced that HBC would instead be renovating its flagship Hudson's Bay store at Yonge and Queen to include a 150,000 square foot Saks Fifth Avenue, and would leave the Yonge and Bloor location as a Hudson's Bay store. [8]
In August 2014, the centre became the subject of controversy when its property manager, Brookfield Properties Ltd, admitted to regularly confiscating bicycles that were locked to a pole on a municipal right of way on Bloor St. outside of the mall. Many Torontonians accused the centre of theft and the City of Toronto assigned by-law officers to investigate. [9]
In 2021, the iconic "The Bay" signage that was displayed on top of the office tower for nearly 50 years was removed. [6] [10] The following year, the Hudson's Bay Company announced that the Yonge and Bloor department store would close at the end of May 2022, and the site is expected to be redeveloped in conjunction with a major overhaul of the Bloor-Yonge TTC station. [11] The store finally closed on May 13, 2022. [12]
Saks Fifth Avenue is an American luxury department store chain headquartered in New York City and founded by Andrew Saks. The original store opened in the F Street shopping district of Washington, D.C. in 1867. Saks expanded into Manhattan with its Herald Square store in 1902 and flagship store on Fifth Avenue in 1924. The chain was acquired by Tennessee-based Proffitt's, Inc. in 1998, and Saks, Inc. was acquired by the Canadian-based Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) in 2013.
Hudson's Bay, also known as The Bay, is a Canadian luxury goods department store chain. It is the flagship brand of the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC), the oldest and longest-surviving company in North America as well as one of the oldest and largest continuously operating companies in the world.
Yonge Street is a major arterial route in the Canadian province of Ontario connecting the shores of Lake Ontario in Toronto to Lake Simcoe, a gateway to the Upper Great Lakes. Ontario's first colonial administrator, John Graves Simcoe, named the street for his friend Sir George Yonge, an expert on ancient Roman roads.
CF Toronto Eaton Centre, commonly referred to simply as Eaton Centre, is a shopping mall and office complex in the downtown core of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is owned and managed by Cadillac Fairview (CF). It was named after the Eaton's department store chain that once anchored it before the chain went defunct in the late 1990s.
Bay Street is a major thoroughfare in Downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is the centre of Toronto's Financial District and is often used by metonymy to refer to Canada's financial services industry since succeeding Montreal's St. James Street in that role in the 1970s.
Yorkville is a neighbourhood and former village in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is roughly bounded by Bloor Street to the south, Davenport Road to the north, Yonge Street to the east and Avenue Road to the west, and it is part of The Annex neighbourhood. Established as a separate community in 1830, it was annexed into Toronto in 1883. Yorkville comprises residential areas, office space, and retail shopping.
Union is a subway station on Line 1 Yonge–University of the Toronto subway in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It opened in 1954 as one of twelve original stations on the first phase of the Yonge line, the first rapid transit line in Canada. It was the southern terminus of the line until the opening of the University line in 1963, and is today the inflection point of the U-shaped line. Along with Spadina station, it is one of two stations open overnight to support late-night streetcar routes.
Queen is a subway station on Line 1 Yonge–University in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is located under Yonge Street north from Queen Street to Shuter Street. Wi-Fi service is available at this station.
Bloor–Yonge is a subway station on Line 1 Yonge–University and Line 2 Bloor–Danforth in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Located in Downtown Toronto, under the intersection of Yonge Street and Bloor Street, it is the busiest subway station in the system, handling over 200,000 passengers on an average weekday. Wi-Fi is available at this station.
Islington is a subway station on Line 2 Bloor–Danforth of the Toronto subway in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is located on the north side of Bloor Street West on the west side of Islington Avenue. A central platform serves trains running in both directions.
Bloor Street is a major east–west residential and commercial thoroughfare in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Bloor Street runs from the Prince Edward Viaduct, which spans the Don River Valley, westward into Mississauga where it ends at Central Parkway. East of the viaduct, Danforth Avenue continues along the same right-of-way. The street, approximately 25 kilometres (16 mi) long, contains a significant cross-sample of Toronto's ethnic communities. It is also home to Toronto's famous shopping street, the Mink Mile.
The Manulife Centre is located on the southeast corner of Bay and Bloor streets, along the Mink Mile and adjacent to the southern edge of the Yorkville district of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It consists of a 51-storey 800-suite luxury residential tower at 44 Charles Street and a shorter tower at 55 Bloor Street West, connected by a retail complex on the main floor and basement.
Atrium is a large 1,000,000-square-foot (93,000 m2) retail and office complex in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Atrium is located adjacent to Yonge-Dundas Square, and was built upon the former site of the former Ford Hotel Toronto, on the north side of Dundas Street West, extending from Yonge Street to Bay Street. The mixed-use building was constructed in 1981 with parking on the second and third underground levels and retail space street and concourse levels topped by an eight-storey office block that rises to 14 floors on the east end of the site and 13 on the west. As part of downtown Toronto's PATH network, Atrium's Concourse Level is directly connected underground to the Dundas subway station, the Toronto Eaton Centre south, across on Dundas Street. A now-closed underground tunnel connects the Atrium to the former Toronto Coach Terminal located west, across Bay Street.
Downtown Toronto is the main central business district of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Located entirely within the district of Old Toronto, it is approximately 16.6 square kilometres in area, bounded by Bloor Street to the northeast and Dupont Street to the northwest, Lake Ontario to the south, the Don Valley to the east, and Bathurst Street to the west. It is also the home of the municipal government of Toronto and the Government of Ontario.
The Simpson Tower, located at 401 Bay Street, is the 38th-tallest building in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Completed in 1968 by architect John B. Parkin, as the headquarters of the Simpsons department store company, it has 33 floors and is 144 m (472 ft) high. In 1978, as part of a corporate takeover, the Simpson Tower became the property of the Hudson's Bay Company. The building today remains the head office of HBC and also houses the head office of subsidiaries Hudson's Bay and Home Outfitters. It is adjacent to the historic Simpsons store at Yonge and Queen, which includes Arcadian Court. Today the store is the flagship for Hudson's Bay, is integrated with the Eaton Centre across Queen Street, and is the home of Toronto's comprehensive health centre.
Mink Mile is an upscale shopping district in the neighbourhood of Yorkville in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, along Bloor Street between Yonge Street and Avenue Road.
Hudson's Bay Queen Street is a building complex on the southwest corner of Yonge Street and Queen Street West in downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It was originally named the Simpson's Department Store, and operated as the flagship store of the Simpsons department store chain from 1895–1991. It became a flagship store of its successor, The Bay, in 1991. The building was retrofitted to house the first Saks Fifth Avenue department store in Canada in 2016.
The One is a supertall skyscraper currently under construction in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. If completed, it will be the tallest building in Canada. At 328.4 metres and 91 storeys, it will be taller than First Canadian Place, which has been Canada's tallest building since 1975. It will also be Canada's first supertall skyscraper, as defined by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat. Construction of the building is estimated to be completed by March 2025.
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