The leases were more or less all from the same company so it's most likely they got a deal for taking them all at once: Fourth paragraph: "Under Steinhafel, t

The leases were more or less all from the same company so it's most likely they got a deal for taking them all at once: Fourth paragraph: "Under Steinhafel, the company paid $1.8 billion for the leases to the entire Zellers chain in 2011" Also later we read that Walmart were sniffing around the same real estate: Walmart approached him and offered to buy the Zellers chain from HBC. Baker realized there was more value to Zellers’ real estate than to the operation itself, since Walmart had soundly beaten the brand. An astute deal maker, Baker and his team reached out to Target to stoke the company’s interest. And they'd planned for a fast entry into the Canadian retail market: But the company had previously decided it wanted to grow as quickly as possible if it were to enter Canada, rather than pursue a slow, piecemeal expansion. The challenge was in acquiring enough real estate to make that possible. The Zellers sale provided just such an opportunity. And all because they thought they really could do this: But Steinhafel may have felt justified in making such a bold move. In the three years since he was appointed CEO, he’d boosted revenue 8.3%—not a huge number, but an impressive one, considering the U.S. was experiencing the worst recession since the Great Depression. Steinhafel had joined Target in 1979, and his entire professional career had been spent with the company. Target experienced steady growth during that time, and Steinhafel had simply become accustomed to succeeding. “The company had never really failed before,” says a former employee who worked in both the U.S. and Canada. There was no reason to think Target wouldn’t be able to pull this off.