It opened in 1976 and was built on the site of Old Eldon Square, a famous part of Georgian Newcastle designed by John Dobson in about 1824.

[1] This redevelopment, which left only the eastern terrace standing, has been criticised, with one writer calling it "the greatest single example of architectural vandalism in Britain since the war".

From a map drawn by Charles Hutton in 1770, it appears that the ancient wall would have run parallel with the south side of Blackett street.

[4] North of the town walls Charles Hutton's 1770 map shows a bowling green on the site of the present day Marks & Spencer, John Lewis part of the megastructure and Prudhoe Street car park.

[5][page needed] During the 1960s the leader of the city council T. Dan Smith, set the groundwork for a new shopping centre.

[6] Old Eldon Square was nonetheless controversially redeveloped in the mid 1970s, with Christopher Booker writing in 1978 that it was "perhaps the greatest single example of architectural vandalism in Britain since the war.

Until ten years ago this most handsome piece of old Newcastle, with its blackened, post-classical frontages survived intact.

[15] The site of the former Green Market was used to make way for Eldon Square South, later known as St Andrew's Way, a new mall with a Debenhams department store as the anchor tenant.

The sale was due to most of the internal retail units being left empty and the centre generating "essentially zero" net income for its London-based owners.