Merry Hill Shopping Centre and local council leaders have stated their aim to better connect and integrate Merry Hill with the traditional town centre of Brierley Hill. The Dudley Canal was re-routed in the late-1990s, and between 2002-2005, 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 has been delayed indefinitely. In July 2017, plans were revealed to expand the centre to include more restaurants and to open a new Odeon cinema
C&A of out-of-town locations, most notably its store at the Merry Hill Shopping Centre in the West Midlands, which opened in November 1989. The company's strategy of selling budget clothes from high-rent city-centre retail stores made it vulnerable to a new breed of competitors operating in cheaper, out-of-town locations, including Matalan and the rapidly expanding clothing operations of supermarket food chains such as Tesco and Asda, and to expanding high street names such as H&M, Zara, and Topshop. C&A in the United Kingdom was a notable example of an incorporated private unlimited company, which meant that it was not required to