Happy birthday for the Merrion Centre

The new Lord Mayor of Leeds, Ald. Mrs Lizzie Naylor, who had only taken office the day before, fulfilled her first official engagement by presiding at the opening and presented Mrs Ziff with a specially cut golden key. With it, Mrs Ziff opened a gilded cage containing a huge cake in the shape of a replica of the Centre watched by her three children.

Mrs Ziff was also presented with a commemorative gold medal – also a gift from her husband. About 1,000 similar medals in gilt had been struck for friends, business associates, and others connected with the project.

A leaflet published by The Merrion Centre, 1964 gives the following details: ‘There are 68,000 cubic yards of excavated material, of which 20,000 cubic yards are rock, and this would fill the 13 storey Wade House office building approximately 1½ times. The total weight of the buildings, excluding the car park, is 42,000 tons, which is equivalent to twice the weight of the Cunard steamship Corinthia, or slightly more than the weight of the Mauretania.’

During two terrible winters while construction was taking place; the freezing cold meant the concrete was not setting. So, always resourceful, Arnold Ziff purchased surplus army blankets to cover the cement at night to help it set. Despite the winters, the Merrion Centre, skirted by Merrion Street, Wade Lane, Cobourg Street and Woodhouse Lane, was opened on schedule.

The YEP said the Centre was ‘built to a specification based on imaginative, far-seeing thinking and the study of development projects in other parts of the world,’ and concluded ‘the centre is impressive not only as an outstanding landmark, but also because it is remarkably self-contained on what was, only several years ago, a seven acre derelict site.”

Arnold Ziff said of the development, designed by Gillinson, Barnett & Partners: “Having more than 150 tenants, which include stores, shops offices, a bowling alley, cinema, dance hall, night club, hotel garage and filling station, and the largest car park in Great Britain for over 1,100 cars, the Merrion Centre qualifies as a city-within-a-city.”

It was the largest commercial redevelopment scheme ever carried out in Leeds, and in the early 1960s having a ‘city-within-a-city’, was groundbreaking for Leeds.

It was the largest indoor shopping centre in the UK and a pioneering development combining shops with leisure activities in a vehicle-free environment. It is only in the last 20 years that other shopping centres have started to look at mixing retail and leisure.

The design was robustly modern, very much of its time, a mass of glass and concrete. Publicity announced the Centre enabled shoppers, whether arriving by bus, or car, to cash a cheque at an on-the-spot bank, shop for almost the complete range of domestic and social requirements, pay their electricity bill, have a meal, a snack, a game of bingo, a game of ten-pin bowls, go dancing, sip coffee or tea, then round off their spending spree with a session in a cosy night club.

Thus, the Merrion Centre was pronounced a day-and-night-out centre, a place that did not close when the shops close, where life begins, when the shops open and ends in the early hours of the following morning.

A remarkable single feature was the new Mecca ballroom – – a £500,00 project – built to accommodate 2,000 people. The interior – also typical of the era – featured a revolving stage for a non-stop flow of music by a 15-piece orchestra and a resident group, there were ultra violet lighting effects, echo chambers and an electronic organ.

Mrs Ziff opened the initial stages of a rolling programme of construction. Further work would include a 120-bedroom hotel, a public house, more shops in Merrion Street and Wade Lane with offices above and a new 1,000-seater cinema was planned to open.