I don't care where Crate & Barrel ends up. I'd go find it
. I used to live near one, and furnished nearly my entire apartment with their furnishings at the time. I'd describe as solid middle of the spectrum or even a a bit higher than middle.
I love Crate & Barrel. It fills a really good niche. They have plenty of good quality kitchen accessories, bath items, and interior pieces (vases, candles, bedding, even home office pieces). There furnishings tend to have a classic contemporary look, and they use unique woods and fibers from exotic locations. They offer good quality at a good price. I think of their kitchen and serving items as falling somewhere between Williams Sonoma and Ikea - closer to Williams Sonoma in quality but with better prices.
The furnishings aren't inexpensive, but they're not outlandish either for the quality. And, again, they select nice looking items. Solid wood beds and tables, great sofa collections. If I were to describe in terms of local stores, I'd say better quality than EQ3 and not as high end (i.e. exclusive) as Living Spaces Interiors or Inform. As I mentioned, though, the furnishings are really solid / well-constructed and offered at reasonable pieces. I think their furniture is a good value for the prices. They may not have the exclusivity of some of Vancouver's high-end stores, but I find it just as good as far as quality and durability and styling.
Here's a link to the catalogue page of their Canadian website:
http://www.crateandbarrel.ca/About-Us-Catalogue.aspx. You'll notice they have different catalogues, kitchen and serving items in one, a different one for furnishings.
It's probably easy to check out on the US store -
www.crateandbarrel.com - as it has an actual on-line purchasing capability - which the Canadian site doesn't seem to have (guess the distribution network is lacking in Canada?). I'd suggest checking out the kitchen section and then the furniture living room and bedroom sets to get a sense of the range of items and style they offer.
As far as location, it really depends on if they have a large or small store. The larger stores are quite large, with a whole floor devoted to furnishings and another floor dedicated to everything else. But they also have smaller stores which focus on just the kitchen, bath, home office, and accessory pieces.
I could very much see them fitting one of the smaller stores into Oakridge (demographics) or Metrotown or even Pacific Centre. For the larger store, I think Oakridge might not have the size location they need. Plus, they tend to like to build their own unique stand-alone stores for the larger stores unless they can get a really prominent mall corner spot with street and mall entrances.
I think Metrotown would be a possible location, especially if they could build a new site in a corner of the exterior parking lot. I suppose they might be willing to go out to the new "Morgan Crossing" area if it continues to develop, but that seems too far out for a first Vancouver store. Once established in an area, maybe. But not at first.
I can't image where they'd go in Park Royale - size or style doesn't seem to fit there.
My bet would be on Metrotown if I had to pick a local knowing what exists now. The only other possibility is if they could convince Oakridge to let them build a new building somewhere on their exterior parking lot, which I can't imagine them really allowing though it would be a good fit demographically.
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