Downfall of UK’s ‘futuristic’ shopping mall hailed as ‘city without weather’

2023-03-07

It was once dubbed a "city without weather", but now it's a ghost town.

Once the largest shopping centre in Europe, Runcorn Shopping City in Cheshire opened in 1972 to much excitement.

It was pitched as the "natural meeting place for the town's social and cultural life" and was built to contain dozens of stores, office buildings, a theatre, a library, a sports hall and even futuristic sky walkways linking it to an adjoining hospital, Manchester Evening News reports.

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"It's a city without the weather. Once you're in Runcorn Shopping City, you'll see it's like summer all year round, because it's fully air conditioned and centrally heated," an advert for the US-inspired mall said at the time.

But alas, the heyday of Shopping City has come and gone and now, a derelict husk of a mall lies in its place.

In the place of bustling walkways and busy stores, the mall is now filled with empty lots after many of the retailers who once did business from the destination shopping centre closed up shop.

Adam Killen, 29, a barber in Runcorn's Old Town, described the venue as "a shopping centre with no shops in it," while another shopper commented that the area "behind the times" and the mall had "stayed in the early 2000s".

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Back in the day, the one-stop-shop drew in crowds from across the north including from much larger cities such as Manchester and Liverpool, boasting it was like nothing "anywhere else in the region", and now new pictures reveal what life was like in the climate-less "city".

"It's safe to bring the children – they'll love it," the ad continued.

"The elderly will have no problems – there are places where one can sit down and just rest."

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Shortly after the mall opened its doors, The Times newspaper said in a review: "Shopping City is possibly the nearest planners have come to the sort of building imagined by science fiction writers.

"In appearance, it resembles a supersonic mosque, with gleaming white bricks even on the dullest day."

Shopping City's impressive modern interior can be put down to its gleaming white tile and marble walls, columns and shop fronts, while its H-shaped layout left room for an indoor "town square" in the middle of the mall.

The multi-level design kept a "futuristic"-looking pod seating area at its centre, with shops lining the surrounding facades.

There were plans for bars and restaurants to be built on the second level.

The success of Runcorn was short-lived, however – by the mid-to-late 1980s Shopping City's luck began to run out.

The complex was dramatically rebranded as Halton Lea Shopping Centre following a change of ownership and quarrels over the condition of the mall.

In September 2009, Halton Lea was taken into receivership but continued business as usual.

After another takeover and more renovation, it was rebranded as Runcorn Shopping Centre – although most locals still call it Runcorn Shopping City and to recognise this, the original name was reinstated as part of the mall's 45th birthday celebrations in July 2017.

But despite the recent milestone, Shopping City has remained a reminder of unfulfilled promise from its prime years.

A select few shops still remain but credit their ongoing success to regular customers who have been visiting Runcorn for a long time.

The Coffee House manager Magda Spratek, 35, said: "We are quite lucky because we have regulars, but it’s very rare that we see a new face, someone who says ‘Let’s go to Shopping City and see what’s there."

Proposals have surfaced over the years as to what should happen to update complex but no official plans have been made as of yet.

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