Manchester Arndale (one of a number of shopping centres in the UK by the same developers, also known simply as the Arndale Centre or the Arndale) is a large shopping centre in Manchester, England. It was constructed in phases between 1972 and 1979, at a cost of £100 million. Manchester Arndale is the largest of the chain of Arndale Centres built across the UK in the 1960s and 1970s. It was redeveloped after the 1996 Manchester bombing. The centre has a retail floorspace of just under (not including Selfridges and Marks and Spencer department stores to which it is connected via a link bridge), making it Europe's third largest city-centre shopping mall. It is one of the largest shopping centres in the UK, with 41 million visitors annually, ahead of the Trafford Centre, which attracts 35 million. History The Manchester Arndale was built between 1971 and 1979 on Market Street in Manchester city centre by developers Town & City Properties, the successors to the Arndale Property Trust, with financial backing from the Prudential Assurance Company and Manchester Corporation. The first phase opened in 1975. It was the largest Arndale Centre in the United Kingdom. Arndale Property Trust The Arndale Property Trust, formed in the early 1950s, took its name from its founders, Arnold Hagenbach and Sam Chippindale. Hagenbach, a Yorkshireman of Swiss extraction, owned a chain of baker's shops and had invested in retail premises from 1939. Chippindale was an estate agent and former civil servant from Otley. Arndale was unusual, though not unique, amongst property companies in being based outside London and specialising in retail property. Hagenbach invested more and was the quieter partner. Chippindale was blunt and outspoken but was able to persuade sceptical northern councils to accept the company's proposals, where London-based developers could not. Arndale bought property north of Market Street in 1952. Redevelopment plans The city council recognised before the end of the Second World War that the area around Market Street was in need of redevelopment, and a plan was drawn up between 1942 and 1945 but no progress was made. The City Surveyor stated in 1962: "Manchester [is] crystallised in its Victorian setting ... A new look for the city has been long overdue. ... Its unsightly areas of mixed industrial, commercial and residential development need to be systematically unravelled and redeveloped on comprehensive lines. Only in this way can a city assume