zone was less than the number forecast for manufacturing. When the Merry Hill Centre first opened, a number of large retail chains decided to move their stores from surrounding towns into the new shopping centre. These included: Marks & Spencer, C&A (C&A left the UK during 2001 and the store was reoccupied by H&M) Littlewoods. The Littlewoods store was taken over by Marks & Spencer in the late 1990s, with a menswear store and cafe opening in its place. The exodus of retailers from neighbouring towns, mainly Dudley and to a lesser degree Stourbridge and Halesowen, left a number of large empty premises behind, which in turn meant many shoppers abandoned town centres for the Merry Hill Centre, which led to a large downturn in trade for those shops remaining, affecting their viability. The first retailer to move to Merry Hill was furniture retailer MFI, who opened a retail warehousing unit during the autumn of 1985. MFI would trade from this unit for 23 years until they went into liquidation in December 2008, with the store having since been occupied by a string of different retailers. By Christmas 1985, MFI had been joined by Queensway furniture store and electrical retailer Atlantis. Further retail warehousing units and a shopping mall were already under construction by this stage. By the spring of 1986, two retail parks were operating from the site, incorporating retailers including B&Q, Halfords and Texas Homecare, as well as the centre's first indoor shopping mall. The first phase of the indoor shopping centre opened in April 1986, with French hypermarket giant Carrefour opening a store at the centre on 1 July that year. They sold the store to Gateway Foodmarkets two years later when withdrawing from the UK, and by 1990 it had been taken over by Asda, who already had a store in Brierley Hill as well as several others in the wider Black Country area, but surprisingly, the Brierley Hill store remained open. A second shopping centre opened on the ground level in 1987 and the centre was expanded further in early 1988 to include an upper level, although the bulk of the centre was opened on 14 November 1989 - by which time it was the largest shopping centre in Europe. By the time of its completion, Merry Hill included several multiple stores including clothing retailers: C&A and Littlewoods, general department store British Home Stores and