Celebrating our retail revolution
WE step back 35 years to October 1987 to see the Metrocentre shopping complex in Gateshead marking its first anniversary.
The Sunday Sun’s sister paper The Chronicle was reporting at the time: “The Metrocentre is already so much part of the North East, it hardly seems that we are celebrating its first year of success.”
The driving force behind the enterprise, John Hall – later to be Sir John – was also acknowledged. “Almost at a stroke he helped radically change the public perception of Tyneside by creating a new image bred on good modern design coupled with excellent quality and style”.
Mr Hall himself declared: “A recent survey of people, on and off site, shows that the unanimous feeling of everyone is that the Metrocentre was the finest shopping centre they has ever visited or seen”.
The centre, our report continued, “is an expression of the new spirit which we are confident is lifting the region to new heights in the worlds of business, commerce and industry. A success on which all our futures depend.”
Officially opening a year earlier in 1986, the sprawling shopping complex was a major shot in the arm for the North East economy at a time when the old traditional industries were on their last legs and unemployment figures were soaring.
The Metrocentre, it was estimated at the time, would create 6,000 new jobs.
Back in 1979, few had realised that, when a former power station’s waterlogged ash dump on the outskirts of Gateshead was chosen for redevelopment, the North East would pioneer a retail revolution.
The concept, planning and design of the Metrocentre covered the needs of the customer in every detail, and the aim was to provide a shopping and leisure centre that combined the best of North American innovation with decades of European shopping tradition.
The first stores, in phase one’s Red Mall, began trading in April, 1986, with the centre’s full official opening and the arrival of phase two’s Green Mall taking place later that year on October 13.
In 1987, phases three and four would see the new Blue and Yellow Malls open, as well as a bus station, multi-storey car park, railway station and the UCI cinema.
The new 600-seat Clockworks food court offered plenty of choice, while a new Toys R Us store was said to be “the biggest toy warehouse in the world”.
And in February 1988, a new indoor funfair, Metroland was launched, soon becoming a Tyneside family favourite.
In 2022, the Metrocentre is a North East institution, and millions of us have shopped, eaten out and gone to the cinema there down the years.
Our photographs from the Sunday Sun archive recall scenes around the centre 35 years ago on October 13, 1987, as it marked its first successful anniversary.