Junction One, Antrim — now The Junction: Shops, Parking, Directions and Opening Times

Northern Ireland’s biggest out-of-town retail and leisure park sits on the Ballymena Road at Antrim, with outlet units, two supermarkets, a ten-screen cinema and a 400 kW charging hub on the same site. Before you search for it: junctionone.co.uk no longer belongs to this park. It now redirects to a psychic astrology website. The operator you want is thejunctionshopping.com. Here is what the park publishes, what only third parties publish, and what nobody publishes at all — including what Frasers Group intends to do with the Dobbies unit it has just emptied.

Last checked 12 September 2026 · Opening times and store lists change — check with the centre before travelling.

The Junction Retail and Leisure Park stands at 111 Ballymena Road on the northern edge of Antrim, where the M2 and M22 meet. It opened in 2004 as Junction One International Outlet Centre — a genuine factory-outlet mall, the sort of thing Northern Ireland had very little of at the time — and it has spent the twenty years since turning into something broader and less tidy: outlet units and full-price units, an Asda and a Lidl, a builders’ merchant, a ten-screen cinema, a Nando’s, a hotel and six ultra-rapid charging bays, all on one apron of tarmac.

Start with the web address, because this one is worse than usual. The address most of the internet still points at — junctionone.co.uk — no longer belongs to this park. We checked it twice on 12 September 2026, on the homepage and on the old /about/ page, and both times it returned a redirect to psychic-astrology.co.uk, a completely unrelated business. The domain has expired and been picked up by somebody else. Google still indexes the old page titles, so a search for “Junction One” can still land you there. The operator’s real site is thejunctionshopping.com, and the number is 028 9442 9111.

The names are a mess and that is nobody’s fault but the landlord’s. Junction One was rebranded The Junction in April 2017. Nine years on, the trade press still uses both: the coverage of this year’s sale was headlined on “Junction One” by Retail & Leisure International and Business Eye, while the operator, the council and the tourist board all say “The Junction”. Completely Retail’s listing is still filed under “Junction One, Ballymena Road, Antrim”. They are one scheme, not two. There is no separately-owned outlet half — the outlet units and the bulky-goods units sit under one directory and were sold as one asset.

The owner changed in June 2026 and most of the internet has not caught up. Frasers Group — Mike Ashley’s company, the owner of Sports Direct — bought The Junction and its sister scheme The Boulevard at Banbridge from Lotus Property in an off-market deal announced on 4 June 2026. The price was not disclosed and nobody has disclosed it since. Anything you read naming Lotus as the owner is out of date, although Lotus does still appear to be running the place day to day.

That change has already cost the park its largest single unit. Frasers served notice on Dobbies, whose 110,000 sq ft Antrim garden centre — the largest Dobbies in the UK when it opened in October 2023 — is closing this month or next so the unit can be redeveloped for what the landlord calls “new retail and leisure uses”. What those uses are has not been published by anybody.

What follows draws on the operator’s own store directory, the borough council’s investment brochure, the coverage of the 2017 rebrand and the 2026 sale, Fastned’s own charging-station page and the Northern Ireland Sunday trading legislation. Where two sources give different numbers we print both and say who published each. Where nobody publishes something — and at The Junction that includes the size of the car park — we say so.

You won't know the place when it's finished, but consumers will be blown away by it.

The essentials

Opening times

There is no park-wide opening-hours page, and that is not an oversight. We checked the operator’s homepage, contact page and leasing page on 12 September 2026 and none of them carries opening times. The contact page sends you to the Stores section instead. That is the right answer for a site like this: The Junction is a park with sixty-odd front doors, not a mall with one, and the cinema, the builders’ merchant and the Asda were never going to agree with each other. What the operator does publish is opening times on every individual entry of its store directory, and the table above is read straight off them.

The Sunday 1pm rule — this is the one to understand

Look down the Sunday column and you will see the same five hours over and over: 1pm to 6pm. That is not the landlord’s house style. It is the law in Northern Ireland. The Shops (Sunday Trading &c.) (Northern Ireland) Order 1997 defines a “large shop” as one with a relevant floor area over 280 square metres, and Article 5(1) permits such a shop to open only “during the period between 1 p.m. and 6 p.m. on a Sunday” — a five-hour window, with Easter Day and Christmas Day excluded altogether.

So the practical shape of a Sunday at The Junction is: the coffee, the McDonald’s, the Greggs and the cinema are open from the morning, because small units and catering are not caught by the Order; and every big shop on the park — Asda, Lidl, B&M, Next Outlet, Nike, Dobbies — unlocks at one o’clock and locks again at six. Turning up at half eleven on a Sunday for the shopping is the single commonest way to waste a journey here, and it catches visitors from Great Britain almost every time. The same rule governs the Abbey Centre, the Boulevard, Rushmere and Sprucefield.

What we could not check

No bank holiday hours, no Christmas or New Year schedule and no Easter arrangements are published by the operator for the park as a whole, and the individual store entries do not carry them either. Dobbies’ hours are printed above but will stop applying shortly — see the shops section. If your journey depends on a particular shop being open, ring 028 9442 9111 or check that retailer’s own site, because the directory entries are not dated and we cannot tell you when they were last touched.

Getting there

By road — use the postcode, not a junction number

Satnav: BT41 4LL. The operator publishes no directions page at all — there is no getting-here section on thejunctionshopping.com — and we are not going to print a motorway junction the landlord has never printed itself.

Here is why that matters more than usual at this particular site. Antrim and Newtownabbey Borough Council’s own investment brochure says the park is “2 minutes from M22 Junction 1 exit”, and Completely Retail’s listing repeats that wording. But the Holiday Inn Express on the same site describes its own location as “M2, Jct.1”. The M2 and the M22 meet at Antrim and the numbering changes across the interchange, so two respectable sources give two different motorways for the same turn-off. A wrong junction number is worse than no junction number. Put BT41 4LL into the satnav and follow the brown and white signs on the Ballymena Road.

For orientation only, and as the marketing agents’ claim rather than a measurement: Belfast city centre is put at about 20 minutes away and Belfast International Airport at about 10 minutes. Roughly a million people live within a 45-minute drive, which is over half the population of Northern Ireland.

Parking

Parking is free. Beyond that, the operator publishes nothing — no space count, no time limit, no height restriction, no enforcement contractor. The only numbers in existence come from Parkopedia, which is crowd-sourced and which we are labelling as such: 940 spaces, free for customers, a two-hour maximum stay, “no height restrictions”, and car park hours of 8am to 10pm Monday to Saturday and 9am to 10pm on Sunday.

We would treat the two-hour figure with real caution. This is a park with a ten-screen cinema, a Nando’s, a bowling-alley-sized garden centre and a pub that trades until half twelve at weekends; a two-hour limit would be unworkable and no other source mentions one. Nobody names an ANPR operator either. If you are staying for a film and a meal, look for signage on arrival rather than trusting a crowd-sourced number — and if you are driving something tall, you are judging the height on sight, because no official limit is published either way.

By train

Antrim station is about 1.5 miles from the park — the council brochure’s figure, and the only distance anyone publishes. It is on NI Railways’ Belfast to Derry~Londonderry line. No operator walking route, no walking time and no shuttle bus is published by anybody, and a mile and a half along an arterial road is not a stroll with shopping. Assume a taxi from the station unless you have checked the walk yourself.

By bus

The council brochure says the site is served by bus services connecting Belfast to Coleraine. That is the entire published detail. No Translink route numbers, no stop name, no frequency and no last-bus time is published by the operator, the council brochure or anyone else we could reach, so we are not going to guess at them. Check Translink’s own journey planner against BT41 4LL before you rely on the bus.

Staying over

There is a 90-bed Holiday Inn Express on the park itself, which the council brochure lists as part of the scheme. It is the only accommodation on site.

The shops

We counted 66 entries on the operator’s live store directory on 12 September 2026, against the “40+” the operator’s own homepage claims. The directory is the better source: it is per-unit, it carries opening times, and it is plainly maintained. Two of the 66 are marked Coming Soon.

The outlet end

The factory-outlet inheritance is still the reason most people drive here. Nike Factory Outlet and Next Outlet are the anchors of that half, with Asics, Skechers, Pavers, Jack & Jones, Mountain Warehouse, Trespass, Regatta, Craghoppers, Animal, Weird Fish, Denby, Hallmark, The Works, Beauty Outlet and The Entertainer around them. Northern Irish names hold their own: Menarys, Klass and Bonmarché are all on the directory.

The everyday end

This is what makes The Junction unusual among outlet schemes. Alongside the outlet units sit an Asda, a Lidl, a Poundland with a Pep&Co, a Centra, a B&M Home Store & Garden Centre — which the operator bills as Northern Ireland’s first B&M garden centre — and both a Murdock Home Centre and a Murdock Builders merchant. The Murdock connection is not a coincidence: Lotus, the landlord from 2016 to 2026, is the Murdock family’s investment vehicle, linked to Murdock Builders Merchants of Newry.

Eating and leisure

Omniplex runs a ten-screen Maxx cinema here; no opening date for it could be sourced from anybody. Food is a drive-thru cluster plus sit-down: Nando’s, The Stone Hound, McDonald’s, Burger King, Popeyes, Subway, Greggs, Costa, Tim Hortons, a Starbucks in-store and a separate Starbucks Drive-Thru, and the independent Blether & Brew. For children there is Sensory Kids, a Young Drivers Zone and — for now — Dobbies Soft Play.

Arrivals, dated where a date exists

• Greggs, 2,000 sq ft — announced 27 February 2025, open and trading on the directory in September 2026. Greggs’ own store finder lists it as “U74 The Junction R&LP”.
• Popeyes — Northern Ireland’s second Popeyes, with a drive-thru; customers reportedly queued twenty hours before the doors opened. The sale coverage in June 2026 described it as recently arrived. We could not pin down the exact opening date.
• Dobbies — October 2023, 110,000 sq ft, a £10m build, the largest Dobbies in the UK at the time. Announced by the council in May 2021 as a 150-job investment.
• Tim Hortons — the council announced it in February 2022.
• Starbucks Drive-Thru — the council brochure put it at summer 2019.
• B&M Home Store & Garden Centre, Murdock Home Centre, Royal Mail lockers, an Amazon Hub and a Community Rescue Service superstore — all announced on the operator’s own news page, which carries no dates on any item.
• PureGym — announced on 27 February 2025 for “later in 2025”. On 12 September 2026 it was still showing Coming Soon on both the operator’s directory and puregym.com. That is around eighteen months late; do not plan a membership around it.
• Beggs and Partners — Coming Soon on the directory.

Departures — and one that is about to happen

Dobbies is closing. This is the single most important thing on this page if you are planning a visit. Frasers Group, having bought the park in June 2026, served notice on Dobbies so the 110,000 sq ft unit can be redeveloped for what the landlord describes as “new retail and leisure uses”. Dobbies confirmed it in August 2026 and was explicit that the decision “relates specifically to the Antrim site and does not reflect Dobbies’ wider business performance” — this is a landlord redevelopment, not a failing shop.

The closing date disagrees with itself and we are printing both. Dobbies’ own store page carried the line “We’re closing by mid October”, while Retail Gazette, The Irish News, the News Letter and the Antrim Guardian all reported the end of October. Plan around the earlier one. The job losses are also disputed: about 120 full- and part-time roles according to The Irish News, “over 40” according to Retail Gazette, and no figure at all in any Dobbies statement. When it goes, Lisburn becomes the only Dobbies in Northern Ireland — a little over seventeen miles away.

Older listings for this park — the council brochure, Completely Retail and the tourist board — still name M&S Outlet, Gap, Homebase, Clarks Factory Shop, Reebok and Bose. None of them is on the operator’s current directory. We could not find a closure reported for any of them, so we are recording them as no longer listed rather than as departures, and noting that a lot of what is written about this park online is describing a tenant mix that no longer exists.

Useful to know

Accessibility — the guide exists, but we could not read it

AccessAble publishes a detailed access guide to The Junction, commissioned under Antrim and Newtownabbey Borough Council, at accessable.co.uk. That is the right place to go for step-free routes, blue badge bay dimensions and accessible toilet detail. It returned an HTTP 403 error to us on 12 September 2026 and we could not read a word of it, so we are pointing you at it rather than summarising something we did not see.

The operator itself publishes nothing on accessibility. There is no accessibility page on thejunctionshopping.com. No Changing Places toilet, no wheelchair loan, no mobility scooter hire and no shopmobility scheme is mentioned anywhere by the operator — which is not the same as saying none exists, only that none is advertised. Parkopedia reports blue badge bays in the car park, crowd-sourced.

Charging the car

This is the park’s most thoroughly documented facility and a genuinely good reason to stop here. Fastned runs a six-bay ultra-rapid hub on the site, up to 400 kW, CCS and CHAdeMO, open 24 hours a day. It opened in March 2025 and was reported as only the second ultra-rapid charging hub in Northern Ireland. Fastned’s own page listed £0.79 per kWh at the standard rate and from £0.55 per kWh on its Gold membership when we checked on 12 September 2026 — tariffs change, so treat that as a snapshot. Payment by the Fastned app, a charge card, Visa, Mastercard, Amex or direct debit. There is also a Nicholl Auto 365 fuel station open around the clock.

Dogs

The operator’s directory carries a “Dog Friendly” category, so individual units are flagged as welcoming dogs. Beyond that category label the operator publishes no dog policy — no rule on the common areas, no water bowls, no exceptions. Assume the outdoor park is fine and check each shop door.

Practicalities the operator does not publish

We looked for, and did not find, any of the following on thejunctionshopping.com: gift cards, free Wi-Fi, lost property arrangements, quiet or sensory hours, baby changing locations, a customer services desk phone line separate from the main number, or coach parking. The contact page does refer to a Visitor Information Centre on site with staff to help. The main number is 028 9442 9111, or (048) 9442 9111 from the Republic. Email reaches the park at info@thejunctionshopping.com, a address published by the Visit Antrim and Newtownabbey tourism listing rather than by the operator.

What is actually on site besides shops

A 90-bed Holiday Inn Express, the Omniplex ten-screen cinema, Royal Mail lockers and an Amazon Hub for parcels, a 24-hour Revolution Laundry, and a monthly food and craft market on the last Saturday of each month. The operator also runs seasonal events — Halloween, a pumpkin patch, a Christmas programme, car shows and a Junction 5K run — which are listed on its events page but, like its news page, without reliable dates.

How it got here

2004: an outlet centre for Northern Ireland

The park opened in 2004 as Junction One International Outlet Centre, with 50 units and an initial investment reported at around £100m. Those figures come from The Irish News’ coverage of this year’s sale, and they are corroborated independently by the park having marked its twentieth anniversary in 2024. No source we could reach gives an opening month, and none names the original developer. Three years later the same market got a second outlet scheme when The Outlet opened at Banbridge in 2007, at a reported £70m — a direct rival forty-odd miles south.

2016: one owner for two rivals

In 2016 Lotus Group — the Murdock family’s investment vehicle, connected to Murdock Builders Merchants of Newry — bought both Junction One and The Outlet at Banbridge, in partnership with London-based Tristan Capital Partners, for a combined figure reported at around £40m. The Irish News noted at the time that it was the first occasion the two rival centres had been in single ownership. No ownership percentage between Lotus and Tristan has ever been published, and we are not inventing one.

2017: the rebrand and the £30m

In April 2017 Lotus dropped the Junction One name, rebranded the park The Junction, and announced a £30m redevelopment over two years. The published scope was substantial: a dozen or more new retail brands, at least two of them new to Northern Ireland; a drive-thru Starbucks and a drive-thru fast-food unit; a cinema; a new entrance and road infrastructure; an outdoor multi-purpose sports court; and extra parking and cycle routes. The employment claims were large — 459 staff at the time, 475 new permanent jobs promised, adding £8.4m to the annual wage bill, plus 430 construction jobs, for a total annual salary bill of around £16m on completion. Footfall then was 2.1 million visits a year.

The council’s investment brochure from around the same period described the finished scheme as set to become “the largest retail and leisure park in Northern Ireland”. Most of the 2017 list did arrive: the Starbucks drive-thru around 2019, Tim Hortons in 2022, the Omniplex cinema at some point nobody has dated, and in October 2023 the largest piece of all — a 110,000 sq ft Dobbies, a £10m build announced by the council in May 2021 as a 150-job investment, and the biggest Dobbies in the United Kingdom when it opened.

June 2026: Frasers Group buys both schemes

On 4 June 2026 — The Irish News dated its own report to 3 June — it was announced that Frasers Group had bought The Junction and The Boulevard from Lotus in an off-market deal. The price was not disclosed and has not been disclosed since. Savills acted for Lotus; CBRE acted for Frasers. Frasers said the acquisition took it past a fifth of the UK outlet market. It was not Frasers’ first Northern Irish property: it already held Donegall Arcade and the Boucher Shopping Centre in Belfast, and had bought the Tower Centre in Ballymena for £8m in 2025.

Alastair Coulson, Lotus Property’s managing director, framed the exit as a job finished: “In 2016 we set out to turn around the fortunes of these two unique assets and both have performed well beyond our expectations,” and “now feels like the right time to hand these assets over to a buyer we know can take them to the next level.” He also said both schemes would “continue to trade business-as-usual and will continue to thrive under the stewardship of the long-standing centre management teams” — and on the evidence of the following months that is what happened, because it was still Lotus’s managing director putting out statements about The Junction in August 2026.

August 2026: the first thing the new owner did was empty the biggest unit

Within ten weeks of completing, Frasers served notice on Dobbies. The garden centre — the park’s single largest occupier and barely three years old — is closing in October 2026 so the unit can be redeveloped for “new retail and leisure uses”. The only landlord-side statement came from Lotus rather than Frasers, and it is worth reading for how little it says: “This decision reflects the exciting next phase for The Junction, as new plans are developed to enhance the scheme for the benefit of shoppers, businesses and the wider community. We look forward to sharing more on this in due course.”

That is the whole of what has been published. There is no planning application in the public domain, no timeline, no named replacement tenant, no floorplan and no statement of Frasers’ own about what The Junction becomes next. Given that Frasers Group is itself a retailer with a large stable of fascias — and given what it has done with other sites it has bought — the obvious guess is that some of its own brands end up in that unit. It is a guess, nobody has confirmed it, and we are not printing it as anything else.