Marks & Spencer Newcastle upon Tyne. M&S has opened a number of stores at out of town locations since the trend to build shopping centres away from town centres became popular in the 1980s. The first was at the MetroCentre, Gateshead, Tyne and Wear, which opened in 1986. Another notable example is the store at the Merry Hill Shopping Centre at Brierley Hill, West Midlands. This store opened on 23 October 1990 shortly after the closure of stores in the nearby town centres of Dudley and West Bromwich; the Merry Hill store was not originally intended to replace these two town centre stores,
Merry Hill Shopping Centre autumn 1989, when construction began on The Waterfront development, which consisted of Phases 6-8. Phase 6 saw the construction of of offices (the first of which were occupied in December 1990), Phase 7 saw the construction of of restaurants and bars and Phase 8 saw the addition of a business park, which was completed in 1995. Waterfront Way was opened in early-December 1990 to serve the new complex and provide a road link to the shopping centre and also to the main A461 road. The Waterfront development created some 4,000 jobs, but the onset of the recession in 2008 saw