Intu Derby may contain up to 200 shops, a supermarket, a cinema and many eateries. Anchor tenants include Next, Marks & Spencer, Debenhams and Sainsbury's. There is also a cinema, named the Showcase Cinema de Lux, in the centre. It has three car parks and is a few minutes walk away from both Derby's bus and railway stations. The UK's largest, but mainly unoccupied, indoor market, the Eagle Market, adjoins the centre. The market and Derby Theatre, which is accessed through the market, were considered to be part of the centre until 2007, when the centre was known as The Eagle Centre. When the centre was expanded and renamed, making itself distinct from the shopping centre for the first time. A much smaller indoor shopping precinct, St Peter's Way, is also physically connected to Intu Derby. Customers can walk seamlessly between the two. On 3 December 2010 a fire, which started in the car park, caused thousands of shoppers to be evacuated from the building.
History
The centre opened as The Eagle Centre on 20 November 1975, at a cost of £7 million. Several streets of terraced housing built in the early 1820s were demolished to make way for the new centre, including a street called Eagle Street, which gave the name of the new development. The centre's market was rebuilt in 1990, and the entire centre was refurbished in 1999. A £340m extension to the Eagle Centre was opened on 9 October 2007 by TV celebrityTess Daly. The extension sits on the site of the former Castlefields Main Centre, a dilapidated outdoor shopping centre already owned by the Westfield Group. The extension doubled the size of the centre from to . As well as adding many new retailers, the extension also houses an 800-seat foodcourt including a KFC outlet, a £30m twelve-screen Cinema de Lux and even more car parking facilities. Many retailers, including Debenhams, Marks & Spencer and the now defunct Republic, closed their existing Derby stores to move to bigger stores in the extension. When the extension opened, the Eagle Centre was renamed Westfield Derby, in line with other Westfield shopping centres. In March 2014, it was announced that Intu Properties was to acquire Westfield Derby. On 1 May 2014, it was rebranded as Intu Derby.
