After the war, the Markets Committee proposed a £55,000 development at the market. New warehouses were provided as well as an open market and car parking. Twenty new butchers' shops were built, older shops were refurbished, and several older buildings were demolished. 1950s and 60s development and opening of competing facilities In 1956 it was found that upgrading the shops to meet modern hygiene regulations was impractical, so new shops were built creating Butchers' Row and the Fish and Game Row. By the 1950s the market had over 400 traders and over 100,000 shoppers visited the complex every Saturday. To relieve this problem, the council bought a site off Pontefract Lane in Cross Green to accommodate a new wholesale market. This market was itself closed in 2009 over concerns that it was being used to sell counterfeit goods. With the opening of the Merrion Centre in the 1960s the market had to compete with the newer but smaller Merrion Market (then Merrion Superstore). In recent years the Merrion Markets have closed and the Kirkgate Markets have regained their dominance in Leeds City Centre. 1975 fire On 13 December 1975 a fire broke out in the market hall. The cause of the fire has never been determined, although stallholders have speculated over several causes including an electrical fault and an overturned paraffin heater. Attempts made to extinguish the fire by stallholders were to prove fruitless. By the time over 100 firefighters had extinguished the fire, most of the roof had collapsed. The ornate 1904 market hall was completely undamaged by the fire and a small part of the 1875 hall survived, however an estimated £7 million worth of damage was done to other halls. Traders who had lost their stalls were accommodated in other parts of the city centre until replacement halls were built at the Kirkgate site. After only three days of closure, undamaged parts of the Markets reopened. Rebuilding 1976–1981 Following the destruction of most of the market hall in the fire of 1975, significant rebuilding works had to take place in order to re-accommodate displaced traders. Shortly after the fire, in 1976, the first replacement hall opened in the north-east corner of the complex. Unlike the ornate 1904 hall or the stone-built 1875 hall (little of which remained), the 1975 hall was a large open hall, built of steel sheets with a lattice roof structure. In 1981 the