// BBC BUSINESS NEWS — FINANZA
Last call for the mall? How shopping centres are reinventing themselves
Keith Ely remembers the Brunel Centre's heyday but is looking to the future
The Brunel Centre was once a thriving retail destination, attracting shoppers from far and wide.
"It was incredible," says town councillor Keith Ely, who remembers its opening in Bletchley, Buckinghamshire, in 1973.
Back then, centre:MK, a large destination shopping centre four miles away in Milton Keynes, did not exist, and the Brunel was quite the draw.
Now, like many other medium-sized shopping centres, it is struggling.
Vacant units and graffiti-daubed shutters dominate, and it has just one store left.
That remaining shop, a Boots Opticians, is set to close later this month ahead of the centre's planned demolition next year.
But Ely, 87, is not upset to see the Brunel make way for flats and a health centre, with only some retail space.
"It is a sad old building, isn't it?" he says. "There is no nostalgia from me."
The Debenhams store in the Grafton Centre in Cambridge closed in 2021