Holt Renfrew to Enlarge and Renovate Ogilvy Store in Montreal

Holt Renfrew & Co. Ltd. (Toronto), the Canadian luxury retailer, said it will spend $60 million to renovate, expand and transform the 147-year-old Ogilvy department store in Montreal.

In the process, the Holt nameplate will disappear from Eastern Canada’s signature city, its most European and most fashionable.

Women’s Wear Daily reports that the store, one of the oldest in North America, will be enlarged by more than 50 percent, to 220,000 square feet, becoming the biggest unit in the Holt Renfrew chain. New luxury and designer shops, both leased and non-leased, will be installed.

“Ogilvy is being reimagined by Holt Renfrew,” Holt’s president Mark Derbyshire, told Women’s Wear. “We have spent the last two years diving deep into this, talking with, and mostly listening to, customers of Ogilvy and Holt to really understand. We discovered the stores have more that’s in common than dissimilar. They are both about fashion, style and luxury, and customers looking and feeling great.”

Construction on the store, on Montreal’s main thoroughfare, Saint Catherine Street, is scheduled to start next fall and be completed in 2017. It involves expanding Ogilvy into the adjacent site of the now-demolished Hotel de la Montagne.

Holt Renfrew will close its Montreal store, two blocks away, once the project is completed.

Holt Renfrew, which is itself a part of the UK’s Selfridges Group (London), bought Ogilvy in 2011.