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The Bluewater Shopping Centre

1 February 2016 | Author/Destination: Great Britain / Großbritannien | Rubric: General, House of the Month Reading Time: 9 minutes

Bluewater Shopping Centre (commonly referred to as Bluewater) is an out of town shopping centre in Stone (postally Greenhithe), Kent, outside the M25 Orbital motorway, 17.8 miles (28.6 km) east south-east of London‘s centre. Opened on 16 March 1999 in a former chalk quarry after three years of building, the site including car parks occupies 240 acres (97 ha) and has a sales floor area of 154,000 m2 (1,600,000 ft2) over two levels, making it the fourth-largest shopping centre in the UK (after the MetroCentre, Trafford Centre and Westfield Stratford City). Elsewhere in Europe only Istanbul‘s Cevahir Mall and Vienna‘s Shopping City Süd are bigger. The floor plan is a triangular shape with 330 stores, including 3 anchors, 40 cafés and restaurants, and a 13-screen cinema. The centre employs 7,000 people and serves over 27 million visitors a year. A main rival is the Lakeside Shopping Centre and its two retail parks by road 8 miles (13 km) away in West Thurrock, Essex, just across the River Thames or 3.2 miles (5.1 km) point-to-point. It is owned by four major UK institutions, Prudential plc and PRUPIM (35%), Land Securities (30%), the Lend Lease Retail Partnership (25%) and Hermes (10%). read more…