Merry Hill Shopping Centre had agreed to become tenants of a new department store in the final phase of the shopping complex. It opened on 23 October 1990, replacing the recently closed stores in nearby towns West Bromwich and Dudley; the retailer had hoped that its Merry Hill store could co-exist with the West Bromwich and Dudley stores, but the onset of the recession and a general downturn in trade in these towns led to the closure of both stores on 25 August 1990. On 24 December 1990, the shopping centre was sold to Mountleigh. Development of the steelworks site did not commence until
Bluewater (shopping centre) B), Ensignbus and London Buses routes serve Bluewater bus station. Bluewater (shopping centre) Bluewater Shopping Centre (commonly referred to as Bluewater) is an out-of-town shopping centre in Stone (postally Greenhithe), Kent, England, outside the M25 Orbital motorway, east south-east of London's centre. Opened on 16 March 1999 in a former chalk quarry after ten years of building works, the site including car parks occupies and has a sales floor area of 154,000 m (1,600,000 ft) over three levels, making it the fifth-largest shopping centre in the UK (after Westfield London, MetroCentre, Trafford Centre and Westfield Stratford City). Elsewhere in Europe