[URBAN NOTE] “Target moves to shut all Canadian stores faster than planned”

The Globe and Mail‘s Marina Strauss reports that Target Canada is closing its stores a month early. I really will have to get out Saturday to see my local one for the first time.

After taking 26 months to launch its first stores in Canada, U.S. discounter Target Corp. is now looking at shutting all 133 of them in just three months – a month less than originally planned.

In a sign of how fast the retailer is moving to leave this country, insolvent Target Canada plans to speed its store closings by one month and turn off the lights by mid-April, a court filing this week says.

“It is anticipated that the pace of delivery of Vacate Notices by the [liquidation] agent will continue to increase over the next two weeks, such that all stores are expected to be closed to the public as early as mid-April, 2015, which represents a significant achievement,” says court-appointed monitor, Alvarez & Marsal Canada Inc.

Since Target Canada filed for creditors’ court protection on Jan. 15, it has been hit with a flood of bad publicity about everything from disappointing liquidation sales to the treatment of its suppliers, pharmacists and other creditors.

Now the U.S. retailer is taking steps to rush its exit, helping to take the spotlight from its failed foray outside its home market where it still has avid cross-border Canadian shoppers.