One Stop Shopping Centre & Retail Park, Perry Barr: Shops, Parking, Directions and Opening Times

A hybrid scheme on the A34 three miles north of Birmingham city centre — a covered mall and an open retail park on one site, with Asda, an M&S Outlet, a Nike Factory Store and around 80 units between them. It is trading normally. The Perry Barr regeneration happened around it, not to it. Parking is free for four hours with a no-return rule that catches people out. Here is what the operator publishes, where the published numbers disagree, and what nobody publishes at all.

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

One Stop sits at 2 Walsall Road, Perry Barr, on the A34 about three miles north of Birmingham city centre. It is two things on one site: a covered shopping mall and an open-air retail park, sharing a car park and a name. The letting particulars call it "a well established hybrid retail park and shopping centre serving the north side of Birmingham", and that is accurate.

Start with the web address. The site you want is onestop-shopping.co.uk, with the hyphen. It is server-rendered, it loads, and its shopping, getting-here, parking and contact pages can all be read — which is more than can be said for a lot of centre websites. The centre's number is 0121 344 3697.

The question people actually ask about this place is whether it is still there. Perry Barr was the epicentre of Birmingham's 2022 Commonwealth Games building programme: the Alexander Stadium rebuild, a £30.9m railway station, a new bus interchange, a rebuilt road network and thousands of new homes on the old university site next door. A lot of Perry Barr was demolished. One Stop was not. It trades normally, seven days a week, and its owners are spending money on it rather than knocking it down.

The owner has changed and much of the internet has not caught up. One Stop was bought in December 2022 by the American investor Magnetar Capital, advised by Northdale Asset Management, in a £76m double deal that also took in Corby town centre. Sovereign Centros was retained to manage it, which is why Sovereign's name is all over the coverage — but Sovereign is the manager, not the owner. Anything naming Europa Capital or Standard Life as the owner is out of date.

What follows comes from the operator's own pages, the trade coverage of the 2016 and 2022 ownership deals, the letting agents' particulars and the West Midlands Combined Authority. Where sources give different figures we print both and say who published each. Where nobody publishes something — here that includes the height limit and any EV charging — we say so.

These latest deals once again reinforce One Stop Shopping Centre's position as the foremost retail destination in this area of the city.

The essentials

Opening times

Checked on the operator's own pages on 12 September 2026. Two separate pages on onestop-shopping.co.uk — the homepage and the contact page — carry the same schedule: 8.30am to 8pm Monday to Wednesday, 8.30am to 10pm Thursday and Friday, 8am to 8pm Saturday, and 9.30am to 5pm on Sunday. That is unusual and worth saying plainly: the operator agrees with itself. At most centres we check, two pages on the same website give two different answers.

The late Thursday and Friday nights to 10pm are the thing to notice. A 10pm close on two weeknights is generous for a scheme this size, and it is the mall's own time rather than a supermarket's.

What is not published: no bank holiday hours, no Christmas or New Year schedule, and no per-store times on the operator's directory. Asda, the Nike Factory Store, the M&S Outlet and the Wetherspoon all keep their own hours and several of them trade outside the mall's — the retail park units in particular are not bound by the mall's shutters. If a specific shop is the reason for your trip, check that retailer's own store finder or ring 0121 344 3697.

Getting there

By road

Use the postcode B42 1AA. That is the operator's own instruction — "enter B42 1AA into your satnav" — and it is all the road guidance it gives. The operator publishes no motorway junction number, so this page does not print one. The letting agents' particulars say M6 junctions 6 and 7 are about three miles away, but that is an agent selling a lease, not the centre telling you how to arrive, and a wrong junction is worse than no junction. What you follow is the A34 Walsall Road, which runs past the front of the site and is one of the main routes into Birmingham from the north.

Parking

1,220 spaces, free for the first four hours, all surface parking. The catch is in the small print and it is a real one: the maximum stay is four consecutive hours and there is no return within two hours. The car park is run by Park Watch on the owners' behalf with camera enforcement, and parking charge notices are issued. If you are planning a long day — a film, a meal and a shop — you are over the limit, and the no-return rule means you cannot simply drive out and back in again.

Blue badge bays are provided. No height restriction is published anywhere, which for a surface car park is less of a problem than it would be for a deck. There is no published coach parking.

By bus — the interchange is at the front door

This is the strongest thing about the site. Perry Barr bus interchange sits at the front entrance of One Stop, not a walk away from it, and it was rebuilt as part of the Commonwealth Games works. The operator lists services 39, 54A, 56, 61, 40X, 424 and 424E, run between them by National Express West Midlands and the smaller operators Central Buses, Diamond, Hi-Ride Coaches and igo. In the operator's own words, "there is a bus stop just outside the main entrance to the centre".

By train

Perry Barr station is around the corner — the operator's phrase — and it is a brand new one. The station was rebuilt at a cost of £30.9m and reopened on 27 May 2022 with lifts, an accessible ticket office, accessible toilets and baby change. Trains run to Birmingham New Street roughly every half hour, calling at Witton, Aston and Duddeston; the letting particulars put the journey at about 12 minutes.

If you have ever avoided this station because of what it used to be, it is worth another look. West Midlands Railway's own description of the rebuild was that it took Perry Barr "from being one of the most outdated stations on the network to one of the smartest".

By bike and on foot

The operator asks people making shorter journeys to walk or cycle, specifically to ease local congestion — which tells you something about the traffic on the A34. No cycle parking provision is published.

Clean Air Zone

Perry Barr is outside Birmingham's Clean Air Zone. The zone covers the area inside the A4540 Middleway ring road, and One Stop is roughly two miles north of it on the far side. Driving to One Stop from the north or west does not put you in the charging zone; driving through the city centre to reach it might.

The shops

One Stop's mix is unusual and it is the reason people travel to it. This is not a fashion mall and it does not pretend to be. It is a value and outlet destination with a full-size supermarket attached, and the outlet element is real rather than decorative.

The anchors

Asda is the food anchor. M&S Outlet, Nike Factory Store, Clarks Outlet and a New Look Clearance Outlet are the outlet element — a genuine cluster of four clearance operations on one site, which is why the trade press has described the scheme as a hybrid shopping centre and outlet centre. Sports Direct, JD Sports, B&M, Home Bargains, Poundland, Argos and Boots fill out the rest of the top end.

The rest of the mall

Superdrug, Savers, Holland & Barrett, Peacocks, Shoe Zone, Trespass, Card Factory, The Works, CEX, Warren James, Max Spielmann, H&T, Halifax, NatWest, EE, Three, Sky, Ladbrokes, Paddy Power, We Buy Any Car, Dreams, and British Heart Foundation and Cancer Research UK. The Gym Group is on site, and so is a market hall — the One Stop Market — with its own stall lettings.

Eating

Nando's, Wetherspoon, KFC, Popeyes, Greggs, Costa, Subway, Chaiiwala and Burger & Sauce. The presence of Chaiiwala and a run of independents alongside the chains is worth flagging: this is a centre that serves its immediate catchment rather than a generic out-of-town food line-up.

Dated arrivals

• JD Sports — 5,430 sq ft on a ten-year lease, announced 4 May 2017, opened July 2017.
• Mattressman and The Gym — let later in 2017; no opening dates published.
• The Food Warehouse — 14,500 sq ft on a ten-year lease, announced 5–6 March 2018, opening April 2018. This was the letting that took the retail park to full occupancy.
• Costa Coffee — 2,320 sq ft in its restaurant format on a ten-year lease, announced the same day, opening April 2018.
• Poundland, B&M and Dreams — named by Sovereign Centros as signings following its refurbishment of the mall. No opening dates are published for these three.

Note the pattern: value operators, sports brands, discount food and a gym. One Stop has never been chasing the tenants that go to the Bullring.

Departures

Wilko had 25,000 sq ft here — it renewed for five years in a deal announced on 4 May 2017 — and it is not on the operator's current directory. Wilko collapsed nationally in 2023, so the absence is explained, but no source publishes a closing date for the Perry Barr branch specifically and we are not going to invent one. What the 2017 renewal does tell you is that a 25,000 sq ft hole opened up somewhere in this scheme; B&M and Poundland both arrived afterwards.

The 2016 and 2017 tenant lists also name Arcadia brands, New Look as a full-line store and Footlocker. Arcadia collapsed nationally in 2020; New Look now appears as a clearance outlet rather than a standard store; Footlocker is not on today's directory. None of those three changes can be dated at this centre. Nobody publishes closures here — no operator statement, no local round-up we could read.

Useful to know

The four-hour rule is the thing to get right

Free parking sounds generous until you read the conditions: four consecutive hours maximum, no return within two hours, cameras, and a private parking company issuing charge notices. Fine for a weekly shop and a coffee. Not fine for a day out, and not fine if you nip home and come back.

Early and late

The mall opens at 8.30am on weekdays and 8am on Saturdays, and closes at 10pm on Thursdays and Fridays. For a suburban scheme that is a wide trading day, and the late nights are genuinely useful if you work in the city.

Accessibility

We could not find an accessibility page on the operator's website. What we can confirm: the mall is covered, the car park is at grade with blue badge bays, and the rebuilt railway station opposite has lifts, an accessible ticket office, accessible toilets and baby change. Nothing is published about a Changing Places toilet, wheelchair hire, a Shopmobility scheme, a quiet hour or an autism-friendly session. That is a gap, not a statement that none of these exist. If one of them decides your trip, ring 0121 344 3697 before you travel.

Things nobody publishes

Free Wi-Fi, cash machines, lost property, gift cards, a dogs policy, baby changing inside the mall, a prayer or quiet room and a taxi rank are all unconfirmed on the pages we could read.

What is next door

Perry Barr has had more than £700m of public investment through and after the 2022 Commonwealth Games, and One Stop is in the middle of it: the rebuilt Perry Barr railway station, the new bus interchange at the front door, a reconfigured A34, the Alexander Stadium in Perry Park, and the former Birmingham City University campus being converted to around 3,500 homes on Sovereign Centros' account. That is a lot of new customers arriving within walking distance, and it is the commercial logic behind the current owners buying the place.

Where it sits among Birmingham's out-of-town options

North Birmingham is unusually well served and the schemes do different jobs. The Fort Shopping Park at Erdington, on the M6, is the open-air fashion park; Star City at Nechells is the leisure and cinema destination; Gallagher Shopping Park at Wednesbury covers the Black Country side. One Stop's distinct offer is the outlet cluster plus a full supermarket — M&S Outlet, Nike Factory Store, Clarks Outlet and New Look Clearance in one covered mall with an Asda attached, which none of the others can match. For full-price fashion you go to the Bullring.

Do not confuse it with the shop chain

"One Stop" is also the name of a national convenience-store chain owned by Tesco, with around a thousand branches. It has nothing to do with this shopping centre. If you search for "One Stop opening times" you will get the convenience shops; add "Perry Barr" or the postcode B42 1AA.

How it got here

The operator publishes no opening date, and only one source anywhere gives a year. The trade release announcing new letting agents, published on 18 January 2017, describes the scheme as built in 1990. That is a single third-party line in an agency announcement, not the operator's own history, and no other source corroborates it — so we print it as one source's figure rather than as the centre's birthday. The letting particulars say only "well established". The operator's website has no history section at all.

What the record does show is that the centre did not change hands for more than twenty years before 2016. Standard Life Investments held it through that period. Europa Capital, with Sovereign Centros, bought the 380,000 sq ft scheme on its 28-acre site — and here the price depends on who you read. CoStar reported it under offer at around £72m on 27 September 2016. Europa Capital's own announcement, dated 12 December 2016, says £69m. The January 2017 agency release says £70m. We are not picking one. The £72m was a pre-completion figure while the deal was under offer, which is the likeliest explanation for the gap, but nobody says so.

Europa's own disclosures at purchase are the most revealing thing in the file. The centre was bought at a 7% initial yield with 13% vacancy by rental value, mall rents running at £30–£60 per sq ft and retail park rents at £15–£22 per sq ft. Hugo Black, a partner at Europa Capital, said Perry Barr offered the fund "the opportunity to continue enhancing leasing performance and benefit from high cash on cash returns". In plain English: they bought it with a seventh of it empty and set about filling it.

Which is what happened. Cushman & Wakefield and Savills were appointed joint letting agents on 18 January 2017. On 4 May 2017 Europa announced over 30,000 sq ft of deals: JD Sports on 5,430 sq ft on a ten-year lease, opening that July, and a 25,000 sq ft five-year renewal by Wilko. Mattressman and The Gym followed later in 2017. Then on 5–6 March 2018 the partnership announced The Food Warehouse on 14,500 sq ft and Costa Coffee on 2,320 sq ft, both ten-year leases, both opening that April — the deals that took the retail park to full occupancy. Simon Phipps, a director at Sovereign Centros, put it in exactly those terms: "We are delighted to be able to announce a fully let retail park at One Stop Shopping Centre."

Sovereign saw what was coming next door even then. Chris Geaves of Sovereign Centros, at the 2016 purchase: "The asset sits in an interesting area within Birmingham which is planned for significant change." Birmingham was awarded the 2022 Commonwealth Games a year later, and Perry Barr became the building site he was betting on.

The current ownership dates from December 2022. Magnetar Capital, an American investor advised by Northdale Asset Management, bought One Stop and Corby town centre together for a combined £76m, with Lunson Mitchenall advising the buyers. The split between the two assets has not been disclosed, so anyone quoting a price for One Stop alone in 2022 is guessing. Sovereign Centros was retained as manager, and remains in that role.

Since then Sovereign reports a refurbishment of the internal mall completed, with Poundland, B&M and Dreams signed. It also holds an adjoining four-acre site with planning permission for about 85,000 sq ft of industrial and logistics space — a reminder that the value story here is as much about the land as the shops.

The Commonwealth Games changed everything around the centre without touching the centre. Birmingham hosted the Games in 2022 and Perry Barr took the bulk of the building: the Alexander Stadium rebuild, a rebuilt road network, and a railway station replaced at a cost of £30.9m and reopened on 27 May 2022 with a bus interchange placed at One Stop's own front entrance. Birmingham City Council describes more than £700m of public sector investment in the area and has published a long-term framework, "Perry Barr 2040: a vision for legacy", setting out how the area should evolve over twenty years. The council's own wording describes the Perry Barr centre as "an established Urban Centre serving the wider area".

For the avoidance of doubt, because the question comes up: One Stop was not demolished, is not being demolished, and no redevelopment of the shopping centre itself has been published. The demolition in Perry Barr was of the old university campus and the old highway structures, not the mall.