159-477: Merry Hill (formerly Intu Merry Hill , Westfield Merry Hill and The Merry Hill Shopping Centre ) is a large shopping complex in Brierley Hill near Dudley , England . It was developed between 1985 and 1990, with several subsequent expansion and renovation projects. The centre is anchored by Harvey Norman , Marks & Spencer , Primark , Asda , Next and Hollywood Bowl . The centre has over 200 shops,
318-540: A May Company California . Two of the largest shopping centers at the time were both in the San Fernando Valley , a suburban area of Los Angeles . They each consisted of one core open-air center and surrounding retail properties with various other owners, which would later hasten their decline as there wasn't a single owner, but rather a merchants' association, which was unable to react quickly to competition in later decades. Valley Plaza opened August 12, 1951. In
477-423: A Roman Catholic , Verne gravitated towards deism . Some scholars believe his novels reflect a deist philosophy, as they often involve the notion of God or divine providence but rarely mention the concept of Christ. On 9 March 1886, as Verne returned home, his twenty-six-year-old nephew, Gaston, shot at him twice with a pistol . The first bullet missed, but the second one entered Verne's left leg, giving him
636-405: A West Midlands Metro extension was proposed. However, only the first four stations were completed; Waterfront East, Central Station, Times Square and Boulevard; with Waterfront West planned as a future development. The system was officially opened on 1 June 1991. The actual public opening was delayed while Her Majesty's Railway Inspectorate investigated evacuation procedures. After operating for
795-598: A retail park , cinema , food court , arcade and over 10,000 parking spaces . Adjacent to the main shopping mall is a marina called The Waterfront accommodating a number of bars, restaurants, the studios of Black Country Radio , and the Headquarters and Control Room of West Midlands Ambulance Service . The Dudley No.1 Canal passes through The Waterfront and along the edge of the shopping centre before descending to Delph Locks . The centre's original developers and owners were Richardson Developments . Savills carry out
954-486: A shopping mall with leisure amenities oriented towards upscale consumers. Theme or festival centers have distinct unifying themes that are followed by their individual shops as well as their architecture. They are usually located in urban areas and cater to tourists. They typically feature a retail area of 80,000 to 250,000 square feet (7,400 to 23,200 m ). An outlet centre (or outlet mall in North America)
1113-517: A town centre ) is typically larger with 400,000 sq ft (37,000 m ) to 800,000 sq ft (74,000 m ) gross leasable area with at least two anchor stores and offers a wider selection of stores. Given their wider service area, these tend to have higher-end stores ( department stores ) that need a larger area in order for their services to be profitable. Regional centres have tourist attractions, education and hospitality areas. Indoor centres are commonly called Shopping Malls in
1272-435: A "shopping center". By the 1940s, the term "shopping center" implied — if not always a single owner — at least, a place sharing comprehensive design planning, including layout, signs, exterior lighting, and parking; and shared business planning that covered the target market, types of stores and store mix. The International Council of Shopping Centers classifies Asia-Pacific, European, U.S., and Canadian shopping centers into
1431-492: A Catholic school suiting the pious religious tastes of his father. Verne quickly distinguished himself in mémoire (recitation from memory), geography, Greek, Latin, and singing. In the same year, 1836, Pierre Verne bought a vacation house at 29 Rue des Réformés in the village of Chantenay (now part of Nantes) on the Loire. In his brief memoir Souvenirs d'enfance et de jeunesse ( Memories of Childhood and Youth , 1890), Verne recalled
1590-533: A Nantes woman from a local family of navigators and shipowners, of distant Scottish descent. In 1829, the Verne family moved some hundred metres away to No. 2 Quai Jean-Bart, where Verne's brother Paul was born the same year. Three sisters, Anne "Anna" (1836), Mathilde (1839), and Marie (1842), followed. In 1834, at the age of six, Verne was sent to boarding school at 5 Place du Bouffay in Nantes. The teacher, Madame Sambin,
1749-478: A chance to court Morel in earnest, he jumped at her brother's offer to go into business with a broker. Verne's father was initially dubious but gave in to his son's requests for approval in November 1856. With his financial situation finally looking promising, Verne won the favor of Morel and her family, and the couple were married on 10 January 1857. Verne plunged into his new business obligations, leaving his work at
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#17328377938561908-577: A deep fascination with the river and with the many merchant vessels navigating it. He also took vacations at Brains , in the house of his uncle Prudent Allotte, a retired shipowner, who had gone around the world and served as mayor of Brains from 1828 to 1837. Verne took joy in playing interminable rounds of the Game of the Goose with his uncle, and both the game and his uncle's name would be memorialized in two late novels ( The Will of an Eccentric (1900) and Robur
2067-516: A dream he described his misery. This requited but aborted love affair seems to have permanently marked the author and his work, and his novels include a significant number of young women married against their will (Gérande in Master Zacharius (1854), Sava in Mathias Sandorf (1885), Ellen in A Floating City (1871), etc.), to such an extent that the scholar Christian Chelebourg attributed
2226-441: A friend of his mother's. While continuing his law studies, he fed his passion for the theater, writing numerous plays. Verne later recalled: "I was greatly under the influence of Victor Hugo , indeed, very excited by reading and re-reading his works. At that time I could have recited by heart whole pages of Notre Dame de Paris , but it was his dramatic work that most influenced me." Another source of creative stimulation came from
2385-588: A furnished apartment at 24 Rue de l'Ancienne-Comédie, which he shared with Édouard Bonamy, another student of Nantes origin. (On his 1847 Paris visit, Verne had stayed at 2 Rue Thérèse, the house of his aunt Charuel, on the Butte Saint-Roch.) Verne arrived in Paris during a time of political upheaval: the French Revolution of 1848 . In February, Louis Philippe I had been overthrown and had fled; on 24 February,
2544-836: A language that his father had been very interested in. In 1989, Verne's great-grandson discovered his ancestor's as-yet-unpublished novel Paris in the Twentieth Century , which was subsequently published in 1994. Verne's largest body of work is the Voyages extraordinaires series, which includes all of his novels except for the two rejected manuscripts Paris in the Twentieth Century and Backwards to Britain (published posthumously in 1994 and 1989, respectively) and for projects left unfinished at his death (many of which would be posthumously adapted or rewritten for publication by his son Michel). Verne also wrote many plays, poems, song texts, operetta libretti , and short stories, as well as
2703-407: A large open green space cherished locally as a haven for wildlife. It was anticipated that the enterprise zone would help replace some of the lost jobs in manufacturing. Incentives for business included a relaxation of planning rules, enhanced capital allowances on industrial and commercial buildings, exemption from Development Land Tax and a ten-year exemption from business rates . In December 1982,
2862-541: A lay student. His unfinished novel Un prêtre en 1839 ( A Priest in 1839 ), written in his teens and the earliest of his prose works to survive, describes the seminary in disparaging terms. From 1844 to 1846, Verne and his brother were enrolled in the Lycée Royal (now the Lycée Georges-Clemenceau ) in Nantes. After finishing classes in rhetoric and philosophy, he took the baccalauréat at Rennes and received
3021-603: A long-term contract in which Verne would give him three volumes of text per year, each of which Hetzel would buy outright for a flat fee. Verne, finding both a steady salary and a sure outlet for writing at last, accepted immediately. For the rest of his lifetime, most of his novels would be serialized in Hetzel's Magasin before their appearance in book form, beginning with his second novel for Hetzel, The Adventures of Captain Hatteras (1864–65). When The Adventures of Captain Hatteras
3180-480: A magazine, and accepted the novel, giving Verne suggestions for improvement. Verne made the proposed revisions within two weeks and returned to Hetzel with the final draft, now titled Five Weeks in a Balloon . It was published by Hetzel on 31 January 1863. To secure his services for the planned magazine, to be called the Magasin d'Éducation et de Récréation ( Magazine of Education and Recreation ), Hetzel also drew up
3339-568: A neighbor: living on the same floor in the Rue de l'Ancienne-Comédie apartment house was a young composer, Aristide Hignard , with whom Verne soon became good friends, and Verne wrote several texts for Hignard to set as chansons . During this period, Verne's letters to his parents primarily focused on expenses and on a suddenly appearing series of violent stomach cramps , the first of many he would suffer from during his life. (Modern scholars have hypothesized that he suffered from colitis ; Verne believed
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#17328377938563498-537: A number of modern features including central heating and cooling, a large outdoor parking area, semi-detached anchor stores, and restaurants. Later that year the world's first fully enclosed shopping mall was opened in Luleå , in northern Sweden (architect: Ralph Erskine ) and was named Shopping ; the region now claims the highest shopping center density in Europe. The idea of a regionally-sized, fully enclosed shopping complex
3657-417: A permanent limp that could not be overcome. This incident was not publicised in the media, but Gaston spent the rest of his life in a mental asylum . After the deaths of both his mother and Hetzel (who died in 1886), Jules Verne began publishing darker works. In 1888 he entered politics and was elected town councillor of Amiens , where he championed several improvements and served for fifteen years. Verne
3816-560: A primary trade area of 5 to 10 miles (8 to 16 km). A retail park , in the United Kingdom and Europe, is a type of shopping centre found on the fringes of most large towns and cities in the United Kingdom, and some (but not all) other European countries. In Europe, any shopping center with mostly "retail warehouse units" (UK terminology; in the US the term is " big-box stores "/superstores), 5,000 square metres (54,000 sq ft) or larger
3975-528: A provisional government of the French Second Republic took power, but political demonstrations continued, and social tension remained. In June, barricades went up in Paris, and the government sent Louis-Eugène Cavaignac to crush the insurrection. Verne entered the city shortly before the election of Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte as the first president of the Republic, a state of affairs that would last until
4134-485: A retail area of 100,000 to 350,000 square feet (9,300 to 32,500 m ) and serve a primary area of 3 to 6 miles (5 to 10 km). Local-scale shopping centres usually have a retail area of 30,000 to 150,000 square feet (2,800 to 13,900 m ), and serve a primary area in a 3-mile (5 km) radius. They typically have a supermarket as an anchor or a large convenience shop and commonly serve large villages or as secondary centres to towns. Car-dependent centres in
4293-661: A secure future in law reached its climax in January 1852, when his father offered Verne his own Nantes law practice. Faced with this ultimatum, Verne decided conclusively to continue his literary life and refuse the job, writing: "Am I not right to follow my own instincts? It's because I know who I am that I realize what I can be one day." Meanwhile, Verne was spending much time at the Bibliothèque nationale de France , conducting research for his stories and feeding his passion for science and recent discoveries, especially in geography . It
4452-582: A sharp condemnation of scientific hubris and ambition, followed soon afterward by A Winter Amid the Ice , a polar adventure story whose themes closely anticipated many of Verne's novels. The Musée also published some nonfiction popular science articles which, though unsigned, are generally attributed to Verne. Verne's work for the magazine was cut short in 1856 when he had a serious quarrel with Pitre-Chevalier and refused to continue contributing (a refusal he would maintain until 1863, when Pitre-Chevalier died, and
4611-487: A shopping mall were already nearing completion by this stage. By the spring of 1986, two retail parks were operating from the site, incorporating retailers including B&Q , Halfords and Texas Homecare , as well as the centre's first indoor shopping mall. The first phase of the indoor shopping centre opened in April 1986, with French hypermarket giant Carrefour opening a store at the centre on 1 July that year. They sold
4770-419: A short time, but Grossetière's parents frowned upon the idea of their daughter marrying a young student of uncertain future. They married her instead to Armand Terrien de la Haye, a rich landowner ten years her senior, on 19 July 1848. The sudden marriage sent Verne into deep frustration. He wrote a hallucinatory letter to his mother, apparently composed in a state of half-drunkenness, in which under pretext of
4929-551: A short while, the monorail was temporarily closed again in 1992, but ran sporadically until 1996. After the system was put up for sale in 1996, the trains and track were transferred in 2001 to the Oasis Shopping Centre , in Broadbeach , Queensland , Australia, to enable expansion of its own monorail system. The remaining monorail station, Central Station, was perfectly preserved, but due to renewed interest in 2016 surrounding
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5088-517: A stage comedy, Les Pailles rompues ( The Broken Straws ). The two young men revised the play together, and Dumas, through arrangements with his father, had it produced by the Opéra-National at the Théâtre Historique in Paris, opening on 12 June 1850. In 1851, Verne met with a fellow writer from Nantes, Pierre-Michel-François Chevalier (known as "Pitre-Chevalier"), the editor-in-chief of
5247-458: A store at Merry Hill during the summer of 1989, but had hoped to keep their Dudley and West Bromwich stores open alongside it; however the declining trade in these towns led to both stores being closed on 25 August 1990, some two months before the Merry Hill store opened. British Home Stores opened a store in the complex in November 1989, but its Dudley store experienced a sharp decline in trade and
5406-556: A variety of essays and miscellaneous non-fiction. After his debut under Hetzel, Verne was enthusiastically received in France by writers and scientists alike, with George Sand and Théophile Gautier among his earliest admirers. Several notable contemporary figures, from the geographer Vivien de Saint-Martin to the critic Jules Claretie , spoke highly of Verne and his works in critical and biographical notes. However, Verne's growing popularity among readers and playgoers (due especially to
5565-516: A wider restructuring of the company. The centre has space for 5 anchors. These currently consist of; Marks & Spencer , Primark , Asda and Next . The centre also had a Debenhams , which was used as a liquidation store in early 2021 as a part of the wider administration process for the company and closed on 15 May 2021. It also contains a range of other major brands and privately operated stores. Notable names are; H&M , TK Maxx , Sports Direct and Boots . Chronological updates: Beyond
5724-820: A year. The most successful of these are: Voyage au centre de la Terre ( Journey to the Center of the Earth , 1864); De la Terre à la Lune ( From the Earth to the Moon , 1865); Vingt mille lieues sous les mers ( Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas , 1869); and Le tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours ( Around the World in Eighty Days ), which first appeared in Le Temps in 1872. Verne could now live on his writings, but most of his wealth came from
5883-455: Is Strøget in Copenhagen, Denmark . In the U.S. chiefly in the 1960s, some cities converted a main shopping street (usually several blocks of one street only) to pedestrian zones known at the time as shopping malls (i.e. the original meaning of "mall": a "promenade"), but now referred to as pedestrian malls . A shopping arcade is a type of shopping precinct that developed earlier and in which
6042-405: Is a group of shops built together, sometimes under one roof. The first known collections of retailers under one roof are public markets , dating back to ancient times, and Middle Eastern covered markets, bazaars and souqs . In Paris, about 150 covered passages were built between the late 18th century and 1850, and a wealth of shopping arcades were built across Europe in the 19th century. In
6201-469: Is a retail park, according to the leading real estate company Cushman & Wakefield. This would be considered in North America either a power center or a neighborhood shopping center , depending on the size. A lifestyle center ( American English ), or lifestyle centre ( Commonwealth English ), is a shopping center or mixed-used commercial development that combines the traditional retail functions of
6360-820: Is a type of shopping center, a North American term originally meaning a pedestrian promenade with shops along it, but in the late 1960s began to be used as a generic term for large shopping centers anchored by department stores, especially enclosed centers. Many malls in the United States are currently in severe decline (" dead malls ") or have closed. Successful exceptions have added entertainment and experiential features, added big-box stores as anchor tenants, or are specialized formats: power centers , lifestyle centers , factory outlet centers, and festival marketplaces . Smaller types of shopping centers in North America include neighborhood shopping centers , and even smaller, strip malls . Pedestrian malls (shopping streets) in
6519-495: Is a type of shopping centre in which manufacturers sell their products directly to the public through their own stores. Other stores in outlet centres are operated by retailers selling returned goods and discontinued products, often at heavily reduced prices. Outlet stores were found as early as 1936, but the first multi-store outlet centre, Vanity Fair , located in Reading, Pennsylvania , did not open until 1974. Belz Enterprises opened
Merry Hill Shopping Centre - Misplaced Pages Continue
6678-465: Is considered to be an important author in France and most of Europe, where he has had a wide influence on the literary avant-garde and on surrealism . His reputation was markedly different in the Anglosphere where he had often been labeled a writer of genre fiction or children's books, largely because of the highly abridged and altered translations in which his novels have often been printed. Since
6837-421: Is his own, the history of the universe". Late in life, Verne confirmed that this commission had become the running theme of his novels: "My object has been to depict the earth, and not the earth alone, but the universe... And I have tried at the same time to realize a very high ideal of beauty of style. It is said that there can't be any style in a novel of adventure, but it isn't true." However, he also noted that
6996-615: Is not used in the U.K. The term "mall" is used for those types of centers in some markets beyond North America such as India and the United Arab Emirates . In other developing countries such as Namibia and Zambia , "Mall" is found in the names of many small centers that qualify as neighborhood shopping centers or strip malls according to the ICSC. The suburban shopping center concept evolved further with larger open-air shopping centers anchored by major department stores. The first
7155-542: Is now known that the legend is an exaggerated tale invented by Verne's first biographer, his niece Marguerite Allotte de la Füye, though it may have been inspired by a real incident. In 1840, the Vernes moved again to a large apartment at No. 6 Rue Jean-Jacques-Rousseau, where the family's youngest child, Marie, was born in 1842. In the same year Verne entered another religious school, the Petit Séminaire de Saint-Donatien, as
7314-481: Is over 800,000 sq ft (74,000 m ) of gross leasable area. These have three or more anchors, mass and varied merchant trade and serves as the dominant venue for the region (25 miles or 40 km) in which it is located. Note that ICSC defines indoor centers above 800,000 square feet (74,000 m ) net leasable area in Asia-Pacific as mega-malls . A regional-scale shopping centre (commonly known as
7473-501: The French coup of 1851 . In a letter to his family, Verne described the bombarded state of the city after the recent June Days uprising but assured them that the anniversary of Bastille Day had gone by without any significant conflict. Verne used his family connections to make an entrance into Paris society. His uncle Francisque de Chatêaubourg introduced him into literary salons , and Verne particularly frequented those of Mme de Barrère,
7632-457: The High Street (street – pedestrianized or not – with a high concentration of retail shops), and retail parks (usually out of the city centre, 5000 sq.m. or larger and anchored by big-box stores or supermarkets, rather than department stores). Most English-speakers follow a mix of the United Kingdom's and United States's naming conventions. In the U.K. a "centre for shopping" is commonly
7791-607: The January Uprising . Hetzel, not wanting to alienate the lucrative Russian market for Verne's books, demanded that Nemo be made an enemy of the slave trade , a situation that would make him an unambiguous hero. Verne, after fighting vehemently against the change, finally invented a compromise in which Nemo's past is left mysterious. After this disagreement, Verne became notably cooler in his dealings with Hetzel, taking suggestions into consideration but often rejecting them outright. From that point, Verne published two or more volumes
7950-617: The Magazine d'Éducation et de Récréation , a Hetzel biweekly publication, before being published in book form. His brother Paul contributed to 40th French climbing of the Mont-Blanc and a collection of short stories – Doctor Ox – in 1874. Verne became wealthy and famous. Meanwhile, Michel Verne married an actress against his father's wishes, had two children by an underage mistress and buried himself in debts. The relationship between father and son improved as Michel grew older. Though raised as
8109-501: The Marks and Spencer store roof. The monorail cost £22 million to build, the construction work taking place along with the final phase of the shopping complex in 1988–89, but due to health and safety concerns, it did not open until 19 months after the centre was complete. 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
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#17328377938568268-658: The Musée des familles : Martin Paz , a novella set in Lima , which Verne wrote in 1851 and published 10 July through 11 August 1852, and Les Châteaux en Californie, ou, Pierre qui roule n'amasse pas mousse ( The Castles in California, or, A Rolling Stone Gathers No Moss ), a one-act comedy full of racy double entendres . In April and May 1854, the magazine published Verne's short story Master Zacharius , an E. T. A. Hoffmann -like fantasy featuring
8427-435: The best man at the wedding of a Nantes friend, Auguste Lelarge, to an Amiens woman named Aimée du Fraysne de Viane. Verne, invited to stay with the bride's family, took to them warmly, befriending the entire household and finding himself increasingly attracted to the bride's sister, Honorine Anne Hébée Morel (née du Fraysne de Viane), a widow aged 26 with two young children. Hoping to find a secure source of income, as well as
8586-787: The 13th century, these covered walkways housed shops, with storage and accommodation for traders on various levels. Different rows specialized in different goods, such as 'Bakers Row' or 'Fleshmongers Row'. Gostiny Dvor in St. Petersburg , which opened in 1785, may be regarded as one of the first purposely-built mall-type shopping complexes, as it consisted of more than 100 shops covering an area of over 53,000 m (570,000 sq ft). The Marché des Enfants Rouges in Paris opened in 1628 and still runs today. The Oxford Covered Market in Oxford , England opened in 1774 and still runs today. The Passage du Caire
8745-602: The 1890s. Historic and/or monumental buildings are sometimes converted into shopping centers, often forming part of a larger city center shopping district that otherwise consists mostly of on-street stores. Examples are the former main post office of Amsterdam, now Magna Plaza ; the Stadsfeestzaal [ nl ] in Antwerp , Belgium, a former exhibition "palace"; the former Sears warehouse, now Ponce City Market in Atlanta ;
8904-420: The 1980s, his literary reputation has improved. Jules Verne has been the second most-translated author in the world since 1979, ranking below Agatha Christie and above William Shakespeare . He has sometimes been called the "father of science fiction", a title that has also been given to H. G. Wells and Hugo Gernsback . In the 2010s, he was the most translated French author in the world. In France, 2005
9063-533: The 19th-century Al-Hamidiyah Souq in Damascus , Syria , might also be considered as precursors to the present-day large shopping centers. Isfahan 's Grand Bazaar , which is largely covered, dates from the 10th century. The 10-kilometer-long, covered Tehran's Grand Bazaar also has a lengthy history. The oldest continuously occupied shopping mall in the world is likely to be the Chester Rows . Dating back at least to
9222-446: The 25th anniversary of its opening artefacts were removed from the station and placed in a memorial exhibition near the lift shaft which once gave access to it. One hundred and fifty commemorative coins were minted and sold at the exhibition. By the end of the monorail's life at the centre, tickets for adults cost 40p while children under the age of 5 enjoyed free travel on the network. A 'monorail replacement bus' service operated between
9381-470: The 3 restaurant units to the rear has remained empty since opening. Opening day eateries consisted of; Nando's , Pizza Express , Burger King , KFC , Subway , Napoli Italian, Oporto (Chicken & Burgers), Tiffinbites (Asian), Nineteen Ten Mexican, Yangtze Express, Zetao Noodles and Sushi, Crepescape, Muffin Break Expresso and Harpers English classics. The Pizza Express closed in late 2020 as part of
9540-628: The Bibliothèque to do scientific and historical research, much of which he copied onto notecards for future use—a system he would continue for the rest of his life. According to the recollections of a colleague, Verne "did better in repartee than in business". In July 1858, Verne and Aristide Hignard seized an opportunity offered by Hignard's brother: a sea voyage, at no charge, from Bordeaux to Liverpool and Scotland. The journey, Verne's first trip outside France, deeply impressed him, and upon his return to Paris he fictionalized his recollections to form
9699-621: The Conqueror (1886), respectively). Legend has it that in 1839, at the age of 11, Verne secretly procured a spot as cabin boy on the three-mast ship Coralie with the intention of traveling to the Indies and bringing back a coral necklace for his cousin Caroline. The evening the ship set out for the Indies, it stopped first at Paimboeuf where Pierre Verne arrived just in time to catch his son and make him promise to travel "only in his imagination". It
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#17328377938569858-475: The Eat Central branding in 2017. On opening, Eat Central consisted of 16 eatery units in the main food court and 3 two-story restaurant units to the rear. However, this has since been reduced to one unit is being occupied by retailer Max Spielmann and another unit at the entrance to the food court, now being used as extra seating, was previously occupied by the now-defunct retailer Phones 4u . Additionally, one of
10017-585: The Richardsons had sold their interest in the shopping centre to Mountleigh. Mountleigh's ownership was short-lived. The Merry Hill Centre was soon put up for sale by Mountleigh's new American owners to pay down the company's debts. In January 1992, a sale was agreed, but fell through possibly due to what were later, unfounded land contamination issues. In May 1992, it was announced that receivers were to be appointed by Mountleigh's bankers and in February 1993 Merry Hill
10176-667: The Théâtre Lyrique and taking up a full-time job as an agent de change on the Paris Bourse , where he became the associate of the broker Fernand Eggly. Verne woke up early each morning so that he would have time to write, before going to the Bourse for the day's work; in the rest of his spare time, he continued to consort with the Onze-Sans-Femme club (all eleven of its "bachelors" had by this time married). He also continued to frequent
10335-600: The U.K. and Europe, if larger than 5,000 square metres (54,000 sq ft) can be termed a small retail park , while in the U.S. and some other countries it is known as a neighborhood shopping center . Convenience-scale centers, independent of other centers are known as strip malls or as shopping parades. These centers are less than 30,000 square feet (2,800 m ) of gross leasable space and commonly serve villages or as parts of larger centers commonly called small squares, plazas or indoor markets. They are also called strip centers or convenience centers. Strip Malls, despite
10494-630: The U.S. or Shopping Centres in Commonwealth English . Community-scale shopping centres are commonly called Main Streets , High Streets or town squares in wider centres or in English-speaking Europe as retail parks for certain centres. These offer a wider range of goods and has two anchor supermarkets or discount department stores. They may also follow a parallel configuration, or may be L- or U-shaped. Community centers usually feature
10653-585: The UCI Cinema (now Odeon) and The Waterfront car parks once the monorail ceased operating, utilising two Travel Merry Hill owned MCW Metrobuses . The centre has around 217 stores and over 10,000 free parking spaces, with a total retail floorspace of 1,671,000 square feet (155,200 m) making the centre the eighth largest in the United Kingdom, behind Westfield London , the MetroCentre , Bluewater , Trafford Centre and Westfield Stratford City . Located on
10812-447: The UK in 2001, kept their Dudley store open until January 1992. Littlewoods kept their Dudley store open for two months after its Merry Hill replacement opened in November 1989, cashing in on the 1989 Christmas market before closing in January 1990. British Home Stores had intended to continue trading from their Dudley store, but a sharp fall in trade following the Merry Hill store's opening led to
10971-541: The United States have been less common and less successful than in Europe. In Canada, underground passages in Montreal and Toronto link large adjacent downtown retail spaces. In Europe shopping malls/centers continue to grow and thrive. In the region distinction is made between shopping centers (shops under one roof), shopping precincts ( pedestrianized zones of a town or city where many retail stores are located),
11130-450: The United States, the widespread use of the automobile in the 1920s led to the first shopping centers of a few dozen shops that included parking for cars. Starting in 1946, larger, open air centers anchored by department stores were built (sometimes as a collection of adjacent retail properties with different owners), then enclosed shopping malls starting with Victor Gruen 's Southdale Center near Minneapolis in 1956. A shopping mall
11289-464: The Upper Mall, Eat Central was opened on October 22, 2009, by TV chef James Martin at the cost of £24 Million to the centres then owners Westfield Group . The food court features a unique lighting system developed by into lighting to lessen the use of more traditional downlights and reused the Eat Central branding from Westfield Derby (Derbion) which opened two years earlier, despite that centre losing
11448-476: The area was among the candidates for enterprise zone status once again — 17 years after the original enterprise zone expired. Ownership of the shopping centre has changed hands several times. The initial developer and owner was a business set up by entrepreneurial twin brothers Don and Roy Richardson , who grew up near the site. The 1989 expansion of the centre was a joint venture between the Richardsons and Tony Clegg's publicly listed Mountleigh and by late 1990
11607-517: The backbone of a semi-autobiographical novel, Backwards to Britain (written in the autumn and winter of 1859–1860 and not published until 1989). A second complimentary voyage in 1861 took Hignard and Verne to Stockholm , from where they traveled to Christiania and through Telemark . Verne left Hignard in Denmark to return in haste to Paris, but missed the birth on 3 August 1861 of his only biological son, Michel . Meanwhile, Verne continued work on
11766-459: The bulk of the centre was opened on 14 November 1989 - by which time it was the largest shopping centre in Europe. By the time of its completion, Merry Hill included several multiple stores including clothing retailers: C&A and Littlewoods , general department store British Home Stores and supermarket chain Sainsburys , as well as numerous smaller retailers. C&A left the UK during 2001 and
11925-413: The centre for a settlement. More recent shopping dedicated areas outside the main centre are known as "shopping centres" (with understanding of the synonym shopping mall) "shopping villages" or "retail parks". According to author Richard Longstreth, before the 1920s–1930s, the term "shopping center" in the U.S. was loosely applied to any group of adjacent retail businesses. A city's downtown might be called
12084-543: The centre was still being developed in the late 1980s, plans were unveiled to build the world's tallest tower at Merry Hill. The tower would have been 2,000 feet tall, with a hotel at its base, a restaurant halfway up and a nightclub plus observatory at the top. However, plans to build it were scrapped in 1992. Redevelopment of the Round Oaks steelworks site did not commence until 1989, when construction began on The Waterfront development, which consisted of Phases 6–8. Phase 6 saw
12243-483: The centre would attract visitors from across the country, by building coach parks; however, the centre failed to attract nationwide visitors as anticipated and the coach parks were redeveloped with private housing and flats in 2003. In 15 January 2024, Australian retailer Harvey Norman announced they would be opening their first store in Great Britain in the centre, in the former Debenhams unit. An elevated monorail
12402-503: The centre, connecting to phase 1 of the centre and would have doubled the amount of leisure and entertainment located at the centre from 5% to 10%. However, as of early 2021 the aging multiplex continues to operate on the retail park and no further plans or information has been released following the 2017 announcement. In 2018, a new 75,000 sq ft flagship Next store opened replacing the Sainsbury's store that closed on 31 December 2016. It
12561-648: The centre, this has been criticised due to fears of impacting trade. The 1993 Impact Study found that Merry Hill employed some 3,370 people of which 80 per cent were women. 69 per cent of the jobs were on a part-time basis. The first retailer to move to Merry Hill was furniture retailer MFI , who opened a retail warehousing unit during the autumn of 1985. MFI would trade from this unit for 23 years until they went into liquidation in December 2008. By Christmas 1985, MFI had been joined by Queensway furniture store and electrical retailer Atlantis. Further retail warehousing units and
12720-657: The cities of Birmingham and Wolverhampton . Similarly, the bus services connect the centre to Cradley Heath railway station , for West Midlands Trains services to Birmingham Snow Hill , Kidderminster and Worcester via Stourbridge Junction . Various distance bus services from Merry Hill are operated by Diamond West Midlands and National Express West Midlands . Shopping center A shopping center in American English , shopping centre in Commonwealth English (see spelling differences ), shopping complex , shopping arcade , shopping plaza , or galleria ,
12879-464: The complex was improved in 1998 by alterations to the two junctions with the A4036 Dudley – Pedmore road. More than 40 houses were demolished to make way for the widened road and re-designed Quarry Bank junction. Merry Hill had brought about the first free-standing Pizza Hut in the UK, the first drive-thru McDonald's restaurant and the largest Texas Homecare store — all opened during 1986. While
13038-640: The connecting walkways are not owned by a single proprietor and may be in the open air or covered by a ground-floor loggia . Many early shopping arcades such as the Burlington Arcade in London, the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan, and numerous arcades in Paris are famous and still functioning as shopping centres, while many others have been demolished. In Russia , centuries-old shopping centres
13197-408: The construction of 69,700 square metres (750,245 sq ft) of offices (the first of which were occupied in December 1990), 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, which was completed in 1995. Waterfront Way was opened in December 1990 to serve
13356-621: The day-to-day management of Merry Hill and strategic planning and asset management is by Sovereign Centros on behalf of the current owners. At the beginning of the 1980s, the recently elected Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher created a number of enterprise zones to attract businesses to areas of high unemployment that had resulted from the down-sizing or closure of major industrial concerns. On 29 October 1980, Chancellor Geoffrey Howe announced that Dudley Council's application for an enterprise zone near to Brierley Hill had been successful. The enterprise zone included Merry Hill Farm,
13515-567: The decision to close the Dudley store, which ceased trading in June 1990. A further blow came when the local council, Dudley Metropolitan Borough , announced that it was bringing in parking charges throughout the area; this turned more shoppers away from local town centres, and towards the Merry Hill Centre, where parking remains free. Though there have since been plans for introducing parking charges at
13674-539: The dense, commercial downtowns into the largely residential suburbs. This formula (enclosed space with stores attached, away from downtown, and accessible only by automobile) became a popular way to build retail across the world. Gruen himself came to abhor this effect of his new design; he decried the creation of enormous "land wasting seas of parking" and the spread of suburban sprawl. Jules Verne Jules Gabriel Verne ( / v ɜːr n / ; French: [ʒyl ɡabʁijɛl vɛʁn] ; 8 February 1828 – 24 March 1905)
13833-661: The design and business plan, a place built according to an overall program that covered the target market, types of stores and store mix, signs, exterior lighting, and parking. In the mid-20th century, with the rise of the suburb and automobile culture in the United States, a new style of shopping center was created away from downtown . Early shopping centers designed for the automobile include Market Square , Lake Forest, Illinois (1916), and Country Club Plaza , Kansas City, Missouri , 55 acres (220,000 m ), opened 1923. The Bank Block in Grandview Heights, Ohio (1928)
13992-558: The earliest public shopping centers is Trajan's Market in Rome located in Trajan's Forum. Trajan's Market was probably built around 100–110 AD by Apollodorus of Damascus , and it is thought to be the world's oldest shopping center. The Grand Bazaar of Istanbul was built in the 15th century and is still one of the largest covered shopping centers in the world, with more than 58 streets and 4,000 shops. Numerous other covered shopping arcades, such as
14151-551: The effect Merry Hill had on retailing in nearby towns was commissioned by West Midland local authorities, public transport coordinator CENTRO and the Department of the Environment. The report published in 1993 found Dudley town centre to have been most adversely affected, followed by Stourbridge, Halesowen, Kidderminster and West Bromwich; while Brierley Hill and Cradley Heath had suffered "a qualitative decline in retailing". Merry Hill
14310-474: The end of 1854, another outbreak of cholera led to the death of Jules Seveste, Verne's employer at the Théâtre Lyrique and by then a good friend. Though his contract only held him to a further year of service, Verne remained connected to the theater for several years after Seveste's death, seeing additional productions to fruition. He also continued to write plays and musical comedies, most of which were not performed. In May 1856, Verne traveled to Amiens to be
14469-487: The family law practice. In 1847, Verne's father sent him to Paris, primarily to begin his studies in law school, and secondarily (according to family legend) to distance him temporarily from Nantes. His cousin Caroline, with whom he was in love, was married on 27 April 1847, to Émile Dezaunay, a man of 40, with whom she would have five children. After a short stay in Paris, where he passed first-year law exams, Verne returned to Nantes for his father's help in preparing for
14628-470: The final phase of the centre was completed in 1989. A Sainsbury's supermarket and Burger King fast-food outlet opened in September and department stores, Debenhams and British Home Stores in November. Marks and Spencer opened on 23 October 1990, two months after the closure of its West Bromwich and Dudley stores on 25 August. This part of the shopping centre was partly remodelled in 1996. Access to
14787-481: The first enclosed factory outlet center in 1979, in Lakeland, Tennessee , a suburb of Memphis . A shopping precinct (U.K. term) or pedestrian mall (U.S. term) is an area of city centre streets which have been pedestrianized, where there is a concentration of " high street shops" such as department stores, clothing and home furnishings stores, and so forth. They may be part of a larger city-centre pedestrian zone , as
14946-418: The first retail unit opening, planning officials working for Dudley Council warned of the adverse effect the proposed shopping centre would likely have on shops in nearby Brierley Hill, Quarry Bank and Stourbridge. Neighbouring local authorities and West Midlands County Council agreed and sought to curb retail development within the enterprise zone, fearing the effect retail provision at Merry Hill would have on
15105-470: The following types: Abbreviations: SC=shopping center/centre, GLA = Gross Leasable Area, NLA = Net Leasable Area , AP=Asia-Pacific, EU=Europe, Can=Canada, US=United States of America does not apply to Europe a.k.a. large neighborhood shopping center in US, Can A superregional-scale center is commonly called a city centre. According to the International Council of Shopping Centers it
15264-555: The former Emporium-Capwell department store in San Francisco , now San Francisco Centre ; Georgetown Park in Washington, D.C. , and the Abasto de Buenos Aires , formerly the city's wholesale produce market. Shopping centers are not a recent innovation. One of the earliest examples of public shopping areas comes from ancient Rome , in forums where shopping markets were located. One of
15423-461: The grade "Good Enough" on 29 July 1846. By 1847, when Verne was 19, he had taken seriously to writing long works in the style of Victor Hugo , beginning Un prêtre en 1839 and seeing two verse tragedies, Alexandre VI and La Conspiration des poudres ( The Gunpowder Plot ), to completion. However, his father took it for granted that Verne, being the firstborn son of the family, would not attempt to make money in literature but would instead inherit
15582-450: The green space, rather than on the former steelworks site, the first phase of the project went ahead and by Christmas 1985 a Queensway furniture store, MFI home furnishings retail warehouse (the very first tenant) and Atlantis Electrical superstore were all trading. Shortly before this, the developers announced plans to triple the amount of retail floorspace at Merry Hill within 18 months, subject to Dudley Council's approval. Early 1986 saw
15741-511: The highly successful stage version of Around the World in Eighty Days ) led to a gradual change in his literary reputation. As the novels and stage productions continued to sell, many contemporary critics felt that Verne's status as a commercially popular author meant he could only be seen as a mere genre-based storyteller, rather than a serious author worthy of academic study. This denial of formal literary status took various forms, including dismissive criticism by such writers as Émile Zola and
15900-402: The idea of a "Roman de la Science", which he developed in a rough draft, inspired, according to his recollections, by his "love for maps and the great explorers of the world". It took shape as a story of travel across Africa and would eventually become his first published novel, Five Weeks in a Balloon . In 1862, through their mutual acquaintance Alfred de Bréhat, Verne came into contact with
16059-477: The illness to have been inherited from his mother's side. ) Rumors of an outbreak of cholera in March 1849 exacerbated these medical concerns. Yet another health problem would strike in 1851 when Verne suffered the first of four attacks of facial paralysis . These attacks, rather than being psychosomatic , were due to an inflammation in the middle ear , though this cause remained unknown to Verne during his life. In
16218-525: The lack of Verne's nomination for membership in the Académie Française , and was recognized by Verne himself, who said in a late interview: "The great regret of my life is that I have never taken any place in French literature." To Verne, who considered himself "a man of letters and an artist, living in the pursuit of the ideal", this critical dismissal on the basis of literary ideology could only be seen as
16377-530: The late 19th century and early 20th century, including the Cleveland Arcade , and Moscow 's GUM , which opened in 1890. When the Cleveland Arcade opened in 1890, it was among the first indoor shopping arcades in the US, and like its European counterparts, was an architectural triumph. Two sides of the arcade had 1,600 panes of glass set in iron framing and is a prime example of Victorian architecture . Sydney's Queen Victoria Markets Building , opened in 1898,
16536-556: The line of novel that I was destined to follow". Dumas fils put Verne in contact with Jules Seveste, a stage director who had taken over the directorship of the Théâtre Historique and renamed it the Théâtre Lyrique . Seveste offered Verne the job of secretary of the theater, with little or no salary attached. Verne accepted, using the opportunity to write and produce several comic operas written in collaboration with Hignard and
16695-407: The link has been delayed further and completion depends upon additional funding being given. In July 2017, plans were revealed to expand the centre to include more restaurants and to open a new Odeon cinema inside the centre to replace the old multiplex at the retail park. These plans were put forward after Intu acquired the existing Odeon Cinemas building and would have been built at the rear of
16854-399: The magazine Musée des familles ( The Family Museum ). Pitre-Chevalier was looking for articles about geography, history, science, and technology, and was keen to make sure that the educational component would be made accessible to large popular audiences using a straightforward prose style or an engaging fictional story. Verne, with his delight in diligent research, especially in geography,
17013-538: The magazine went to new editorship). While writing stories and articles for Pitre-Chevalier, Verne began to form the idea of inventing a new kind of novel, a "Roman de la Science" ("novel of science"), which would allow him to incorporate large amounts of the factual information he so enjoyed researching in the Bibliothèque. He is said to have discussed the project with the elder Alexandre Dumas, who had tried something similar with an unfinished novel, Isaac Laquedem , and who enthusiastically encouraged Verne's project. At
17172-432: The main shopping centre is a separate retail park which has a number of shops and restaurants and also a cinema. Stores in this area include Wren Kitchens , Oak Furniture Land , Bensons for Beds , The Range , Currys , B&M Home & Garden , Carpetright , Halfords , Pets at Home and Matalan among others. In April 2021, Lidl announced plans to open a store in the former Ultimate Outdoors unit. This opened later
17331-614: The mid-1950s, it claimed to be the largest shopping center on the West Coast of the United States and the third-largest in the country. The first part of the Panorama City Shopping Center opened as on October 10, 1955, and would grow until the mid-1960s, it claimed to be the first shopping center with four major department store anchors, even though the "center" was in fact a marketing association for multiple adjacent properties. Northland Center near Detroit , built 1954,
17490-437: The name, are not considered "malls" in North America. Power centers , in North America, are open-air single-level shopping centers that almost exclusively feature several big-box retailers as their anchors (although newer urban power centers have adopted enclosed and/or vertical formats while retaining the strong big-box emphasis). They usually have a retail area of 250,000 to 600,000 square feet (23,000 to 56,000 m ) and
17649-709: The neighbouring Round Oak Steelworks closed with the loss of around 1,300 jobs; later, the enterprise zone was extended to include the Round Oak site. Jobs were created in the small and medium-sized units built by developers on trading estates, but no large-scale manufacturing business had been attracted to the enterprise zone. Oldbury-based, Richardson Developments who had bought both the Merry Hill Farm and Round Oak sites decided to focus on retail and leisure, rather than manufacturing for Merry Hill Farm. Despite protests from some local residents over construction taking place on
17808-487: The new area containing a new Odeon cinema and the expansion linking into the existing Eat Central area. Along with this, there are plans to improve connections to The Waterfront and wider surrounding areas. A bus station has served Merry Hill since its opening, but the current, more substantial bus station was developed in the early 1990s and gives direct connections to towns including Dudley , Halesowen , Stourbridge , Walsall , West Bromwich and Cradley Heath as well as
17967-511: The new complex and provide a road link to the shopping centre and also to the main A461 road between Dudley and Stourbridge . The Waterfront development created some 4,000 jobs, but the onset of another recession in 2008 saw many businesses vacate the development, leaving a high percentage of office units and other buildings becoming empty. In June 2011, in a bid to bring jobs back to the Waterfront,
18126-764: The novels Invasion of the Sea and The Lighthouse at the End of the World after Jules's death. The Voyages extraordinaires series continued for several years afterwards at the same rate of two volumes a year. It was later discovered that Michel Verne had made extensive changes in these stories, and the original versions were eventually published at the end of the 20th century by the Jules Verne Society (Société Jules Verne). In 1919, Michel Verne published The Barsac Mission (French: L'Étonnante Aventure de la Mission Barsac ), whose original drafts contained references to Esperanto ,
18285-402: The opening of Halfords and B&Q . The building contract for the shopping malls was awarded to Tarmac Construction . A Carrefour hypermarket opened on 1 July 1986 as part of the first phase of the indoor shopping centre, but closed within 18 months, its place taken by a Gateway supermarket. Asda had replaced Gateway by 1990 and have held the tenancy ever since. The ground floor of
18444-440: The original climax of Captain Hatteras , including the death of the title character, Verne wrote an entirely new conclusion in which Hatteras survived. Hetzel also rejected Verne's next submission, Paris in the Twentieth Century , believing its pessimistic view of the future and its condemnation of technological progress were too subversive for a family magazine. (The manuscript, believed lost for some time after Verne's death,
18603-415: The power to amend the enterprise zone conditions, but despite his urging, Dudley councillors decided by a single vote to back developer Don and Roy Richardson's plans. When the Merry Hill Centre first 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 and Littlewoods . An Impact Study on
18762-459: The project was extremely ambitious: "Yes! But the Earth is very large, and life is very short! In order to leave a completed work behind, one would need to live to be at least 100 years old!" Hetzel influenced many of Verne's novels directly, especially in the first few years of their collaboration, for Verne was initially so happy to find a publisher that he agreed to almost all of the changes Hetzel suggested. For example, when Hetzel disapproved of
18921-472: The prolific librettist Michel Carré . To celebrate his employment at the Théâtre Lyrique, Verne joined with ten friends to found a bachelors' dining club, the Onze-sans-femme ( Eleven Bachelors ). For some time, Verne's father pressed him to abandon his writing and begin a business as a lawyer. However, Verne argued in his letters that he could only find success in literature. The pressure to plan for
19080-510: The publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel , and submitted to him the manuscript of his developing novel, then called Voyage en Ballon . Hetzel, already the publisher of Honoré de Balzac , George Sand , Victor Hugo , and other well-known authors, had long been planning to launch a high-quality family magazine in which entertaining fiction would combine with scientific education. He saw Verne, with his demonstrated inclination toward scrupulously researched adventure stories, as an ideal contributor for such
19239-409: The recurring theme to a "Herminie complex". The incident also led Verne to bear a grudge against his birthplace and Nantes society, which he criticized in his poem La sixième ville de France ( The Sixth City of France ). In July 1848, Verne left Nantes again for Paris, where his father intended him to finish law studies and take up law as a profession. He obtained permission from his father to rent
19398-455: The salons, Verne diligently pursued his law studies and graduated with a licence en droit in January 1851. Thanks to his visits to salons, Verne came into contact in 1849 with Alexandre Dumas through the mutual acquaintance of a celebrated chirologist of the time, the Chevalier d'Arpentigny. Verne became close friends with Dumas' son, Alexandre Dumas fils , and showed him a manuscript for
19557-479: The same year, Verne was required to enlist in the French army, but the sortition process spared him, to his great relief. He wrote to his father: "You should already know, dear papa, what I think of the military life, and of these domestic servants in livery. ... You have to abandon all dignity to perform such functions." Verne's strong antiwar sentiments, to the dismay of his father, would remain steadfast throughout his life. Though writing profusely and frequenting
19716-514: The same year. There is a ten-screen Odeon Cinema situated on the retail park. It was the first multiplex cinema in the Dudley borough and the first new one to have been built for some fifty years. It was originally owned by AMC Cinemas and later sold to UCI Cinemas . It was refurbished following the 2005 merger with the Odeon Cinemas chain. The owners and local council leaders have stated their aim to better connect and integrate Merry Hill with
19875-473: The scientific knowledge then available, are generally set in the second half of the 19th century, taking into account the technological advances of the time. In addition to his novels, he wrote numerous plays, short stories, autobiographical accounts, poetry, songs, and scientific, artistic, and literary studies. His work has been adapted for film and television since the beginning of cinema, as well as for comic books, theater, opera, music and video games. Verne
20034-465: The second year. (Provincial law students were in that era required to go to Paris to take exams.) While in Nantes, he met Rose Herminie Arnaud Grossetière, a young woman one year his senior, and fell intensely in love with her. He wrote and dedicated some thirty poems to her, including La Fille de l'air ( The Daughter of Air ), which describes her as "blonde and enchanting / winged and transparent". His passion seems to have been reciprocated, at least for
20193-461: The shopping mall was extended during 1987 and an upper shopping level added in early 1988. A separate 10-screen cinema opened in November 1988. The 350-seat Jules Verne food court, which offered a round-the-world eating experience and had a large globe-shaped balloon as its centrepiece, opened in June 1989 on the upper level; however, it closed within five years due to disappointing trade and was subdivided into additional retail units. Construction of
20352-526: The size of regional malls still operate, consisting of multiple arcades. They developed from previous so-called "trading rows", which were essentially markets where traders could obtain space to sell their goods. Great Gostiny Dvor in Saint Petersburg in its present buildings dates back to the 1760s. With a total area of 800,000 square feet (74,000 m ), GUM in Moscow, opened in its present buildings in
20511-622: The stage adaptations of Le tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours (1874) and Michel Strogoff (1876), which he wrote with Adolphe d'Ennery . In 1867, Verne bought a small boat, the Saint-Michel , which he successively replaced with the Saint-Michel II and the Saint-Michel III as his financial situation improved. On board the Saint-Michel III , he sailed around Europe. After his first novel, most of his stories were first serialised in
20670-506: The store to Gateway Foodmarkets around 18 months later when withdrawing from the UK, and by 1990 it had been taken over 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. A second shopping centre opened on the ground level in 1987 and the centre was expanded further in early 1988 to include an upper level, although
20829-461: The store was reoccupied by H&M . On 23 October 1990, Marks & Spencer opened a new department store at Merry Hill replacing the recently closed stores in nearby Dudley and West Bromwich . In the autumn of 1991, the Marks & Spencer store expanded on the ground level into a vacant neighbouring unit. The Littlewoods store had expanded some years earlier, taking in a former Woolworths store on
20988-510: The traditional town centre of Brierley Hill. The Dudley Canal was re-routed in the late-1990s, and between 2002 and 2005, housing has been developed around the complex (several apartment blocks opposite the cinema as well as apartments and houses overlooking Pedmore Road). A new line of the West Midlands Metro tram system was scheduled to reach the site in 2011, but was delayed with a new opening date of late 2023. Due to lack of finance,
21147-756: The twentieth century" by Malcolm Gladwell . The first retail complex to be promoted as a "mall" was Paramus, New Jersey's Bergen Mall . The center, which opened with an open-air format in 1957, was enclosed in 1973. Aside from Southdale Center , significant early enclosed shopping malls were Harundale Mall (1958) in Glen Burnie, Maryland, Big Town Mall (1959) in Mesquite, Texas, Chris-Town Mall (1961) in Phoenix, Arizona, and Randhurst Center (1962) in Mount Prospect, Illinois. Other early malls moved retailing away from
21306-472: The upper level; there had been fears that Woolworths would close at least some of their branches in nearby towns when the Merry Hill store opened, but trade from the Woolworths at Merry Hill was relatively disappointing and ironically most of the local Woolworths stores all outlasted the Merry Hill store by some 15 years, only closing when the retailer went into liquidation at the end of 2008. The Littlewoods store
21465-528: The wider area. The Evening Mail newspaper advised careful consideration but viewed job creation within the enterprise zone as the priority, whether from manufacturing or retail. In February 1986, the chairman of the West Midlands strategic planning committee took the "unprecedented" step of writing to leading retailers, spelling out the "strong opposition" to further expansion of retail at Merry Hill. Environment Secretary Kenneth Baker had given Dudley Council
21624-664: The word "mall", that is, a pedestrian promenade (in U.K. usage a "shopping precinct"). Early downtown pedestrianized malls included the Kalamazoo Mall (the first, in 1959), "Shoppers' See-Way" in Toledo , Lincoln Road Mall in Miami Beach , Santa Monica Mall (1965), and malls in Fort Worth and in Canada's capital, Ottawa . The downtown Urbana, Illinois mall , converted from a city street,
21783-405: Was a French novelist, poet, and playwright. His collaboration with the publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel led to the creation of the Voyages extraordinaires , a series of bestselling adventure novels including Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas (1870), and Around the World in Eighty Days (1872). His novels, always well-researched according to
21942-558: Was a center in Ardmore, Pennsylvania later named Suburban Square , when the Philadelphia department store Strawbridge & Clothier opened a four-story, 50,000 sq ft (4,600 m ) branch there on May 12, 1930. A much larger example would be the 550,000-square-foot (51,000 m ) Broadway-Crenshaw Center in Los Angeles built in 1947, anchored by a five-story Broadway and
22101-459: Was a collection of stores under one roof aimed at the workers in the company town of Morgan Park , in Duluth, Minnesota . Before the 1920s–1930s, the term "shopping center" in the U.S. was loosely applies to a collection of retail businesses. A city's Downtown might be called a "shopping center". By the 1940s, "shopping center" implied — if not always a single owner — at least, comprehensive planning in
22260-646: Was a natural for the job. Verne first offered him a short historical adventure story , The First Ships of the Mexican Navy , written in the style of James Fenimore Cooper , whose novels had deeply influenced him. Pitre-Chevalier published it in July 1851, and in the same year published a second short story by Verne, A Voyage in a Balloon (August 1851). The latter story, with its combination of adventurous narrative, travel themes, and detailed historical research, would later be described by Verne as "the first indication of
22419-603: Was also an ambitious architectural project. Shopping Centers built before the 20th century ; Notes: *based on current ICSC shopping center type definitions, **center opened in 1926 without department store, which was added in 1930 Early examples of "stores under one roof" include the nine-building shopping arcade Dayton Arcade in Dayton, Ohio (1902–1904), primarily built to rehouse the public food markets in more sanitary conditions, but which added retail clothing and household goods stores. The Lake View Store , opened July 1916,
22578-509: Was an early strip mall or neighborhood center of 30 shops built along Grandview Avenue, with parking in the back for 400 cars. Uniquely for the time, it had multiple national grocery store tenants Kroger , Piggly Wiggly , and the A&;P Tea Company. The Park and Shop (1930) in Cleveland Park, Washington, D.C. was an early strip mall or neighborhood center with parking in the front. It
22737-498: Was anchored by Piggly Wiggly and built in an L shape. Other notable, large early centers with strips of independent stores, adjacent parking lots, but no department store anchors, include Highland Park Village (1931) in Dallas ; and River Oaks Shopping Center (1937) in Houston . In the late 1950s and into the 1960s, the term "shopping mall" was first used, but in the original sense of
22896-417: Was announced on September 26, 2021, that the centre would undergo a 5-year improvement and expansion plan with the plan to be the "Ultimate family shopping and leisure destination in the West Midlands". While the expansions are still in the early planning there are plans to divide the centre into new districts focusing on entertainment, fashion & health and wellbeing along with others. Early concept art shows
23055-443: Was closed in June of that year. The completion of Merry Hill resulted in the loss of many big name retailers from nearby town centres, with Dudley being the hardest hit, suffering an estimated 70% decline in retailing market share between 1985 and 1990. However, some retailers kept their stores in nearby towns open, despite opening new stores at Merry Hill. C&A, who had a store at Merry Hill from November 1989 until withdrawing from
23214-595: Was declared "Jules Verne Year" on the occasion of the centenary of the writer's death. Verne was born on 8 February 1828, on Île Feydeau, a then small artificial island on the river Loire within the town of Nantes (later filled in and incorporated into the surrounding land area), in No. 4 Rue Olivier-de-Clisson, the house of his maternal grandmother Dame Sophie Marie Adélaïde Julienne Allotte de La Fuÿe (born Guillochet de La Perrière). His parents were Pierre Verne, an avoué originally from Provins , and Sophie Allotte de La Fuÿe,
23373-399: Was enclosed, designed by Victor Gruen . Although Bergen Mall (opened 1957) led other suburban shopping centers in using "mall" in their names, these types of properties were still referred to as "shopping centers" until the late 1960s, when the term "shopping mall" started to be used generically for large suburban shopping centers. The term "mall" for regional enclosed shopping centers
23532-506: Was finally published in 1994.) The relationship between publisher and writer changed significantly around 1869 when Verne and Hetzel were brought into conflict over the manuscript for Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas . Verne had initially conceived of the submariner Captain Nemo as a Polish scientist whose acts of vengeance were directed against the Russians who had killed his family during
23691-412: Was found to have had only a limited impact on the larger centres of Birmingham, Wolverhampton and Walsall. The exodus of retailers from Dudley, and to a lesser degree Stourbridge and Halesowen, left a number of large empty premises, leading many shoppers to abandon the town centres for the Merry Hill Centre, affecting the viability of those shops remaining. Marks & Spencer had agreed to become tenants of
23850-416: Was in this period that Verne met the illustrious geographer and explorer Jacques Arago , who continued to travel extensively despite his blindness (he had lost his sight completely in 1837). The two men became good friends, and Arago's innovative and witty accounts of his travels led Verne toward a newly developing genre of literature: that of travel writing . In 1852, two new pieces from Verne appeared in
24009-507: Was made a knight of France's Legion of Honour on 9 April 1870, and subsequently promoted in Legion of Honour rank to Officer on 19 July 1892. On 24 March 1905, while ill with chronic diabetes and complications from a stroke which paralyzed his right side, Verne died at his home in Amiens , 44 Boulevard Longueville (now Boulevard Jules-Verne). His son, Michel Verne, oversaw the publication of
24168-418: Was opened at Merry Hill in June 1991, but 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 the 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
24327-541: Was opened in Paris in 1798. The Burlington Arcade in London was opened in 1819. The Arcade in Providence, Rhode Island introduced the retail arcade concept to the United States in 1828 and is arguably the oldest "shopping center" in the country. The Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan , Italy followed in the 1870s and is closer to large modern malls in spaciousness. Other large cities created arcades and shopping centers in
24486-661: Was pioneered in 1956 by the Austrian-born architect and American immigrant Victor Gruen . This new generation of regional-size shopping centers began with the Gruen-designed Southdale Center , which opened in the Twin Cities suburb of Edina, Minnesota , United States in October 1956. For pioneering the soon-to-be enormously popular mall concept in this form, Gruen has been called the "most influential architect of
24645-482: Was published in book form in 1866, Hetzel publicly announced his literary and educational ambitions for Verne's novels by saying in a preface that Verne's works would form a novel sequence called the Voyages extraordinaires ( Extraordinary Voyages or Extraordinary Journeys ), and that Verne's aim was "to outline all the geographical, geological, physical, and astronomical knowledge amassed by modern science and to recount, in an entertaining and picturesque format that
24804-766: Was sold to Elliott Bernerd's London property company, Chelsfield and an undisclosed international partner. Chelsfield had assumed full ownership of the shopping centre by June 1996. Westfield , the Australian-owned shopping centre group took over the Merry Hill Centre as a member of the consortium that acquired Chelsfield in December 2004, but two years later sold 50 per cent to fund manager, Queensland Investment Corporation . Intu Properties purchased Westfield's 50 per cent in March 2014 and became full owners in June 2016 after buying out Queensland Investment Corporation. In June 2020, Intu became Merry Hill's second owner to enter administration, 28 years after Mountleigh. Prior to
24963-475: Was taken over by Marks & Spencer in the late 1990s and converted into a furniture and menswear store, and cafe. In 2008, Merry Hill Centre, along with nearby Brierley Hill, was redesignated as the 'strategic town centre' of the Dudley Borough, and thus the focus of future local government investment. The Merry Hill Centre continues to draw most of its trade from the local area. The developers did plan that
25122-543: Was the first of 4 centers that Victor Gruen built for Hudson's ( Eastland Center , Southland Center , and Westland Center were the others) At launch, Northland Center was the world's largest shopping center. The enclosed shopping mall did not appear until the mid-1950s. One of the earliest examples was the Valley Fair Shopping Center in Appleton, Wisconsin , which opened in March 1955. Valley Fair featured
25281-535: Was the widow of a naval captain who had disappeared some 30 years before. Madame Sambin often told the students that her husband was a shipwrecked castaway and that he would eventually return like Robinson Crusoe from his desert island paradise. The theme of the robinsonade would stay with Verne throughout his life and appear in many of his novels, some of which include The Mysterious Island (1874), Second Fatherland (1900), and The School for Robinsons (1882). In 1836, Verne went on to École Saint‑Stanislas,
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