Center Hill Merry Shopping
Westfield Merry Hill is a shopping centre in Brierley Hill near Dudley, West Midlands, England. It was built by Tarmac Construction. The first businesses moved into the complex in 1985 and the original centre was fully occupied by 1989. Several expansion projects have taken place since then. Originally the centre was owned by the original developers, Richardson Developments, but it has seen a number of other owners, including Chelsfield and Mountleigh. Its current owners are the Australian Westfield Group and the Queensland Investment Corporation (QIC). The centre has around 310 stores and a total retail floorspace of 148,000m² (1.593m ft²), making the centre the fourth largest in the United Kingdom, behind the MetroCentre, Bluewater and Westfield London.
Merry Hill is home to a Odeon cinema, larger shops such as Primark, Next, Marks and Spencer, BHS, Debenhams, supermarkets Asda, Sainsbury's and Eat Central food hall including Pizza Express & Nandos. Adjacent to the main shopping site is The Waterfront, which accommodates offices for HM Revenue and Customs amongst others, and has a marina area providing space for a number of bars and restaurants.
The Dudley No.1 Canal passes though the adjacent Waterfront site and high above the the edge of the shopping centre, before descending Delph Locks.
History
Construction
In the 1980s, the Government created a number of Enterprise Zones which gave incentives to firms wishing to set up business in areas which had been affected by a downturn in the manufacturing industry. The Brierley Hill area had suffered the loss of the Round Oak Steelworks, and it was hoped that other manufacturers could be encouraged to move into the area. Incentives included relaxed planning rules and a ten-year period exempt from business rates. Developers saw the opportunity to take advantage of lack of restrictions by making a shopping centre, rather than industrial units originally envisaged as the mainstay of the Enterprise Zone.
Several square miles of land in a triangular area between Dudley, Brierley Hill and Netherton were designated as an Enterprise Zone in 1981.
The Enterprise Zone encompassed both the former steelworks site and a large open green space known as Merry Hill Farm. This was cherished locally as a haven for wildlife. In 1982, the site was bought by Richardson Developments with the intention of constructing a large shopping centre. 1982 also saw the closure of the Round Oak Steelworks after 125 years.
There was much hostility when building of the first phase of the shopping centre commenced on the green space, rather than on the former steelworks site, which itself was incorporated into the enterprise zone in 1984.
Despite protests from local citizens the site was destroyed, and the first retailers moved onto the site in 1985 with the completion of a retail park (phase 1) and shopping mall (phase 2).
In 1986, a second shopping mall was added, opening in the November, to form phase 3. . Phases 4 was added during 1988, and phase 5 was completed in September 1989, at the same time that the existing malls were upgraded. The official opening of the complex took place on 14 November 1989.
On 24 December 1990 , the shopping centre was sold to Mountleigh.
The steelworks site was not built on till later stages of the Merry Hill/Waterfront Project. The Waterfront section, which consisted of Phases 6-8, was constructed between 1989 and 1995. Phase 6 saw the construction of 69,700 square metres (750,245 sq ft) of offices, Phase 7 saw the construction of 6,500 square metres (69,965 sq ft) of restaurants and bars and Phase 8 saw the addition of a 15,800 square metres (170,070 sq ft) business park.
Phase 4 was partly remodelled in 1996, just eight years after its completion.
Road access to the complex was improved in 1998 with the completion of alterations to the two access points from the A4036 main road between Dudley and Pedmore.
Merry Hill had brought about the first free-standing Pizza Hut in the UK, the first drive-in McDonald's restaurant and the largest Texas Homecare store.
This is still an issue of contention: in a real-life retcon histories often merely state that the centre was built on the steelworks, and omit mention of Merry Hill Farm; photographs are cropped to show only the steelworks. Planning consent had been granted by Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council, some time before the closure of Round Oak Steelworks in December 1982, for the land of the farm to be used for the tipping of steelworks waste and the perimeter of the site had been landscaped with embankments and tree planting to mask the tipping from neighbouring housing. Levelling of the site for the first phase of building not only destroyed the farm, which would soon have been covered by waste in any case, but also removed the new landscaping and threatened the stability of the canal embankment on the hillside above the site. This resulted in the closure of the Dudley Canal to traffic for several years.
Effect on surrounding towns
When the Merry Hill Centre opened, a number of large retail chains decided to move their stores from surrounding towns into the new shopping centre. These included Marks & Spencer, C&A (C&A closed in early 2001 and the store is now occupied by H&M) and Littlewoods (which closed down around the same time as C&A in Merry Hill). These left a number of large empty premises behind, which in turn meant many shoppers abandoned town centres for the Merry Hill Centre, which led to a large downturn in trade for those shops remained, affecting their viability.
Carrefour were among the first tenants at the centre when Phase 1 opened in 1985, the store being taken over by Gateway and then in 1989 by Asda, who already had a store in Brierley Hill town centre as well as several others in the wider Black Country area, but surprisingly, the Brierley Hill store remained open.
WH Smith opened a store on two levels near Marks & Spencer in 1989; it relocated to a new ground floor unit in the same phase of the centre in 2006 and the original store was taken over by Primark. The opening of the WH Smith at Merry Hill did not result in the closure of any of its stores in the nearby towns.
Most affected was Dudley, the largest nearby town, whilst Halesowen and Stourbridge were also hit. The Marks & Spencer stores in this towns all closed to be replaced with the Merry Hill store that opened in July 1989. Marks & Spencer opened a second store in 1996 when it took over the Littlewoods store - this new store specialises in furniture and menswear.
As well as offering the advantages of an enterprise zone to businesses, the Merry Hill Centre has therefore also given businesses the opportunity to expand as well as relocate.
A further blow came when the local council, Dudley Metropolitan Borough, announced that it was bringing in parking charges throughout its area; this turned more shoppers away from local towns, and towards the Merry Hill Centre, where parking remains free.
Dudley Council have nonetheless announced large increases in car parking charges in the rest of the Borough, including Brierley Hill where some charges have increased by over 100%, resulting in continuing rumours that parking charges may be soon introduced at the Merry Hill Centre.
After more than 20 years, local towns have still not been able to compete with the centre, and have become increasingly run-down, though schemes to improve things are occasionally mooted.
The Merry Hill Centre continues to draw most of its trade from local towns. The developers did plan that the Centre would attract visitors from across the country. Coach parks have now had apartments and houses built on them.
Monorail
An elevated monorail opened at Merry Hill in June 1991, but this closed in 1996 as a result of a combination of technical problems and safety concerns (especially the difficulty of evacuation), exacerbated by a dispute between the owners of Merry Hill and The Waterfront which at this time were owned separately. The infrastructure was later removed, leaving only one disused monorail station and part of the old railings visible—on top of the Marks and Spencer store roof.
The monorail cost £22 million to build. There were to be five stations, with the system extending over the canal and terminating close to the site of the former Round Oak railway station: Where an interchange with a Midland Metro extension was proposed. However, only the first four stations were completed.
The system was officially opened on 1 June 1991.
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