Shopping Centre
Inside shopping centre |
|
| Location | Barnet, UK |
|---|---|
| Opening date | 1976 |
| Owner | Hammerson and Standard Life |
| Architect | BDP |
| Total retail floor area | 74,320 m2 on opening |
| No. of floors | 2 (3 in Fenwick, John Lewis & M&S) |
| Website | www.brentcross.co.uk |
When Brent Cross Shopping Centre opened in 1976 it was the first stand-alone shopping mall in the UK. It was initially constructed in a dumbbell shape running east-west parallel to the North Circular Road, with the two largest stores (John Lewis and Fenwicks) at the ends. It was expanded and renovated beginning in 1995, with additional shops and restaurants on an arm running north from the middle. A multi-storey car park replaced the remainder of the open parking area to the north.
Although it is smaller than more recent shopping centres such as the MetroCentre, Bluewater, Lakeside and Westfield London, it has one of the largest incomes per unit area of retail space in the UK.
Brent Cross currently offers 8,000 free car-parking spaces, but according to the planning application submitted in March 2008 (see below) will eventually introduce parking charges.
On the 6 November 2012 six people on three motorbikes entered the shopping centre and smashed in the windows at jewellers Fraser Hart. An estimated £2m worth of jewellery was stolen.
Read more about this topic: Brent Cross
Famous quotes containing the words shopping and/or centre:
“The new shopping malls make possible the synthesis of all consumer activities, not least of which are shopping, flirting with objects, idle wandering, and all the permutations of these.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)
“Go anywhere in England where there are natural, wholesome, contented, and really nice English people; and what do you always find? That the stables are the real centre of the household.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)