The Manulife Centre at 55 Bloor Street West is seeing a transformation that is adding retail space in an expanded podium that will soon house Canada’s first Eataly (spanning about 50,000 square feet over three floors) as well as a new location for Over the Rainbow Jeans, and an updated Birks jewellery store which will feature street-front facades for Breitling, Van Cleef & Arpels and Cartier.

Excellence Canada is pleased to announce that, at the third annual Canadian Business Excellence Awards for Private Businesses, 37 Canadian companies will be receiving the Canadian Businesses Excellence Award for clearly demonstrating a strategic approach to successfully improving business performance and achieving goals, with a focus on the following three key performance areas: Delighted Customers, Engaged Employees, and Innovation.

Toronto’s Union Station has been under construction since 2009, and the massive revitalization project is finally bearing fruit. Below its main hall, a refreshing collection of thoughtfully designed shops is making visitors rethink the landmark as a place to visit and not just race through to make the train home.

Toronto’s historic Union Station is transforming into a world-class commuter and retail destination. It’s already the busiest transit centre in the country, even surpassing Toronto’s Pearson International Airport, in terms of annual visitors. Union Station’s retail component is seeing an overhaul with plans for more than 100 retail spaces contained within a significant heritage structure that in many ways is the heart of the city.

Toronto-based Deciem, the self-proclaimed ‘Abnormal Beauty Company’, will open a store in July in Toronto’s PATH, in the retail component of the Exchange Tower in the heart of the city’s Financial District. It will be Deciem’s sixth location in the Greater Toronto area, as the beauty brand secures diverse retail spaces in an effort to gain maximum consumer exposure.

Marcelle Rademeyer and Jean-Francois Nault of Beauleigh, the retail leasing consultancy behind the First Canadian Place and Union Station revamps, tell us long-term vision beats “hit and run” space-filling. Here’s Marcelle, the firm’s founder, and partner Jean-Francois, solving the world’s most pressing retail problems.