History of landmark shopping mall
WHEN it opened in September 1998, the Trafford Centre transformed the shopping experience for customers and retailers in the north west.
There was nothing as vast or as distinctive – some might argue gaudy – as its dome, which became a landmark, and it now boasts more than 200,000 square feet of floor space for shoppers.
The planning process to build the vast mall was the most lengthy and drawn-out in British history as the original idea was first dreamed up back in 1986 by wealthy John Whittaker, of Peel Holdings.
Manchester council strongly opposed its development and felt it would impact negatively on the city centre economy.
The Trafford Centre offered thousands of free car parking spaces as it lured people to embrace the concept of out-of-town shopping. The planning issue was finally decided in the House of Lords a decade later.
Once it got the go ahead, the Trafford Centre took more than two years to build at a cost of £600m.
During its glory years, it was successful with barely an empty shop as the UK economy boomed.
The Trafford Centre was sold to Capital Shopping Centre, now Intu Properties, for £1.6bn in 2011.
With anchor tenants such as Selfridges, and later John Lewis, it drew shoppers away from high streets which began to wither on the vine as it blossomed, attracting people from across the north west.
At its height, it was attracting 35 million visitors a year. Visitor numbers fell to 30m by 2018 and are likely to be tiny in 2020 as a result of the pandemic.
This spring, the Metrolink extension allowed visitors to get to the Trafford Centre directly by tram for the first time after four years of construction work.