Adjacent to the main shopping mall is a marina called The Waterfront accommodating a number of bars, restaurants, the studios of Black Country Radio, and the Headquarters and Control Room of West Midlands Ambulance Service.

At the beginning of the 1980s, the recently elected Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher created a number of enterprise zones to attract businesses to areas of high unemployment that had resulted from the down-sizing or closure of major industrial concerns.

On 29 October 1980, Chancellor Geoffrey Howe announced that Dudley Council's application for an enterprise zone near to Brierley Hill had been successful.

[4] The enterprise zone included Merry Hill Farm, a large open green space cherished locally as a haven for wildlife.

[7] Jobs were created in the small and medium-sized units built by developers on trading estates, but no large-scale manufacturing business had been attracted to the enterprise zone.

[8] Despite protests from some local residents over construction taking place on the green space, rather than on the former steelworks site, the first phase of the project went ahead and by Christmas 1985 a Queensway furniture store, MFI home furnishings retail warehouse (the very first tenant) and Atlantis Electrical superstore were all trading.

Shortly before this, the developers announced plans to triple the amount of retail floorspace at Merry Hill within 18 months, subject to Dudley Council's approval.

[11] A Carrefour hypermarket opened on 1 July 1986 as part of the first phase of the indoor shopping centre, but closed within 18 months, its place taken by a Gateway supermarket.

The 350-seat Jules Verne food court, which offered a round-the-world eating experience and had a large globe-shaped balloon as its centrepiece, opened in June 1989 on the upper level; however, it closed within five years due to disappointing trade and was subdivided into additional retail units.

[citation needed] Merry Hill had brought about the first free-standing Pizza Hut in the UK, the first drive-thru McDonald's restaurant and the largest Texas Homecare store — all opened during 1986.

[16] Redevelopment of the Round Oaks steelworks site did not commence until 1989, when construction began on The Waterfront development, which consisted of Phases 6–8.

The initial developer and owner was a business set up by entrepreneurial twin brothers Don and Roy Richardson, who grew up near the site.

[20] In May 1992, it was announced that receivers were to be appointed by Mountleigh's bankers[21] and in February 1993 Merry Hill was sold to Elliott Bernerd's London property company, Chelsfield and an undisclosed international partner.

[24] Intu Properties purchased Westfield's 50 per cent in March 2014 and became full owners in June 2016 after buying out Queensland Investment Corporation.

[29] The Evening Mail newspaper advised careful consideration but viewed job creation within the enterprise zone as the priority, whether from manufacturing or retail.

An Impact Study on the effect Merry Hill had on retailing in nearby towns was commissioned by West Midland local authorities, public transport coordinator CENTRO and the Department of the Environment.

The report published in 1993 found Dudley town centre to have been most adversely affected, followed by Stourbridge, Halesowen, Kidderminster and West Bromwich; while Brierley Hill and Cradley Heath had suffered "a qualitative decline in retailing".

In 15 January 2024, Australian retailer Harvey Norman announced they would be opening their first store in Great Britain in the centre, in the former Debenhams unit.

The infrastructure was later removed, leaving only one disused monorail station and part of the old railings visible—on top of the Marks and Spencer store roof.

The monorail cost £22 million to build, the construction work taking place along with the final phase of the shopping complex in 1988–89, but due to health and safety concerns, it did not open until 19 months after the centre was complete.

[42] By the end of the monorail's life at the centre, tickets for adults cost 40p while children under the age of 5 enjoyed free travel on the network.

Located on the Upper Mall, Eat Central was opened on October 22, 2009, by TV chef James Martin at the cost of £24 Million[44] to the centres then owners Westfield Group.

The food court features a unique lighting system developed by into lighting to lessen the use of more traditional downlights and reused the Eat Central branding from Westfield Derby (Derbion) which opened two years earlier, despite that centre losing the Eat Central branding in 2017.

Opening day eateries consisted of; Nando's, Pizza Express, Burger King, KFC, Subway, Napoli Italian, Oporto (Chicken & Burgers), Tiffinbites (Asian), Nineteen Ten Mexican, Yangtze Express, Zetao Noodles and Sushi, Crepescape, Muffin Break Expresso and Harpers English classics.

A new line of the West Midlands Metro tram system was scheduled to reach the site in 2011, but was delayed with a new opening date of late 2023.

[49] A bus station has served Merry Hill since its opening, but the current, more substantial bus station was developed in the early 1990s and gives direct connections to towns including Dudley, Halesowen, Stourbridge, Walsall, West Bromwich and Cradley Heath as well as the cities of Birmingham and Wolverhampton.

The areas around Next, TK Maxx, H&M, Eat Central, the amphitheatre and outside Debenhams at Merry Hill made an appearance on the popular Cartoon Network show, The Amazing World of Gumball as "Elmore Mall" in the episode called "The Mothers", Eat Central also made an appearance in the episode called "The Burden".

[54][55] Working at Merry Hill gave Catherine O'Flynn the inspiration for the fictional Green Oaks centre, the main location in her successful novel What Was Lost.

[56][57] The former Sainsbury's at Merry Hill was featured in the third episode of the first series of the popular children's television programme Rosie and Jim, called "Supermarket" which was originally broadcast on ITV on 17 September 1990, and featured the boat's owner John Cunliffe going shopping at Sainsbury's, with the ragdolls Rosie and Jim in tow.