Riverside Retail Park, Norwich: Shops, Parking, Directions and Opening Times

A big-box park on 42 acres of former railway land beside Norwich station, with Morrisons at one end, Matalan and B&M at the other, and a fifteen-connector rapid charging hub in the car park. Three different things in Norwich are called Riverside, and they have three different owners. The shops belong to Nuveen Real Estate, the cinema and bowling next door belong to Landsec, and the swimming pool belongs to the city council. There is no website for the retail park — none at all — so here is what the letting agents, the retailers and Norwich City Council publish instead, and where they contradict each other.

Last checked 18 September 2026 · Opening times and store lists change — check with the centre before travelling.

Riverside Retail Park occupies the flat ground between Norwich railway station, the River Wensum and Carrow Road football ground, on Albion Way in the city's NR1 1WR postcode. It is a conventional open retail park — large boxes around a surface car park — on land that used to be railway sidings and industry, about half a mile from the market place. Morrisons anchors it with a food store and a petrol station, Matalan and B&M take the two biggest non-food boxes, and Boots, Next, H&M, Hobbycraft, Clarks, Nike, JD Sports, Poundland, Card Factory, Greggs, Costa, Starbucks and a McDonald's fill in around them.

Start with the name, because Norwich uses it three times over. The Riverside Retail Park on this page is the shops on Albion Way. The Riverside Entertainment Centre, which trades as "Riverside Norwich" on riversidenorwich.co.uk, is a separate leisure scheme a few yards away on Koblenz Avenue at NR1 1WT — Odeon, Hollywood Bowl, PureGym, GraVity, Nando's, TGI Fridays, Wagamama and a Wetherspoon — and it is owned by Landsec, not by the retail park's landlord. And the Riverside Leisure Centre is Norwich City Council's swimming pool and gym, a third thing again. If you searched for one and landed on another, that is why.

There is no operator website for the retail park. Not a broken one, not a blocked one, not a JavaScript-only one — nothing. No opening hours, directions, parking rules, accessibility statement, store directory, phone number or named manager exists for this park anywhere. Everything below comes from the letting agents, the retailers' own store pages, Norwich City Council's planning documents, the mapping services and the consultant who master-planned the site.

The landlord is Nuveen Real Estate, named in that role on both agents' listings — Curson Sowerby Partners and Morgan Williams share the letting instruction. What Nuveen paid, when it bought, from whom and through which fund are all unpublished. There is no trade-press report of any Riverside Norwich transaction at all, which for a park of this size in a city of this size is genuinely odd.

Two things matter more than the rest. The maximum stay in the car park is disputed by an hour, on a site where drivers report charges of £60 and more. And Norwich City Council does not think this is an out-of-town retail park at all — its own local plan calls Riverside a district centre in its own right, an unusual thing for a council to say about a row of sheds next to a supermarket.

The two fringe of centre retail parks (Riverside Retail Park and Cathedral Retail Park) have separate policy designations, the former regarded as a Large District Centre in its own right, the latter part of the secondary shopping area of St. Benedicts.

The essentials

Opening times

Checked on the retailers' own store pages on 18 September 2026. There is no operator website, so there is no park-wide opening time to print. Above is four retailers each publishing their own hours, plus a car park whose hours come from a crowd-sourced mapping service.

The retailers do not line up, and that is the practical point. On a Monday, H&M shuts at half six and Next stays open until seven. On a Saturday, Next opens an hour before H&M does. On a Sunday, Morrisons does not open until ten and closes at four. Do not assume that because one shop is open the rest are.

Boots' hours could not be retrieved — boots.com returns a 403 to us on its Norwich Riverside store page, so one of the larger units here has no published hours. Nothing on this park publishes bank holiday, Christmas or Easter hours either. If you are planning a trip over a holiday weekend, ring the individual shop.

One genuinely useful row that is not an opening time: Morrisons runs quieter hours here from 2pm to 3pm on weekdays and 9am to 10am on Saturdays, with music and announcements reduced. It is the only quiet-hours provision evidenced anywhere on the site.

Getting there

By car

There is no motorway junction on this page because Norwich has no motorway. No operator publishes driving directions for this park either, so we are not going to invent a route. The relevant roads are the A47 Norwich Southern Bypass and the A146 from Lowestoft, with Albion Way and Koblenz Avenue forming part of the A147 inner ring road that the park sits on. Set the satnav to NR1 1WR.

Watch the postcodes — there are four across one site. NR1 1WR is the retail park and the Morrisons store. NR1 1WT is the Entertainment Centre on Koblenz Avenue, and it also turns up on some of the retail park's own unit listings, which is how people end up in the wrong car park. NR1 1WU is the retail park car park and the petrol station. NR1 1XA is the cinema and the leisure multi-storey.

Parking, and a warning

Parking is free for customers. The scheme has 582 spaces according to both Curson Sowerby and the Rapleys letting brochure of May 2025; Parkopedia counts 295 at the Albion Way car park specifically, most likely one car park within the larger figure, though nobody says so.

The maximum stay is disputed by an hour and we are not resolving it. Parkopedia gives three hours. Morrisons, on its own store page for this site, says "maximum 2 hours free parking". One is a retailer describing its own premises, the other is crowd-sourced, and they disagree. Enforcement is by GroupNexus, and Parkopedia's review threads are full of people reporting charges between £60 and £101.50 — including one after a 26-minute visit, and several who say the queue to get out is what pushed them over. Those are crowd-sourced accounts rather than published policy, but they are consistent enough that we would treat two hours as the safe assumption and keep the receipt.

The leisure scheme next door has a different car park with different rules, and it is not free. The Entertainment Centre uses a 364-space multi-storey on Koblenz Avenue at NR1 1XA. Free parking there is validated — stamped inside by the cinema, bowling alley, gym or trampoline park. Everyone else pays: published leisure rates run from £2.50 for up to two hours to £21 for five to twenty-four hours, with a rail commuter rate of £13.60, or £12.60 validated. Park there to do your shopping and you will be charged.

Match days at Carrow Road are a known unknown. Norwich City's ground is across the road, and nobody publishes a matchday parking policy for the retail park. Check the fixture list before you set off.

By train, bus, foot and bike

Norwich railway station is adjacent to the park — the agents' own particulars describe the scheme as next to the football ground, the station and the Entertainment Centre. That makes this one of very few retail parks in Britain you can genuinely reach on an inter-city train. No walking distance or time is published by anyone: not the agents, not the train operator, not the council. It is plainly a short walk; we are not going to put a number on it that nobody has measured.

For buses, the only route we can evidence by name is 6B, "Riverside Retail Park – Newmarket Road – Eaton", on bustimes.org under Konectbus/Central Connect. Beyond that, nothing: no stop name, no frequency, no timetable. Be careful with searches — Norwich's Riverside Road stop, served by routes 25, 26, 26A and 57, is on the other side of the river.

The park is close enough to the city centre to walk to, but the council's own retail monitor calls Riverside "largely a car based destination" and pins its hopes for better walking and cycling links on the new St Anne's Quarter housing development. No cycle provision, coach parking or taxi rank is published, and no source connects the park to any of Norwich's park-and-ride sites.

The shops

The anchors

Morrisons is the food anchor, around 85,000 sq ft as built, with petrol, café, pharmacy, bakery, butcher, fishmonger, car wash and Click & Collect. It is not the landlord's store — it was sold to the grocer at development stage, and the forecourt is run by Motor Fuel Group as site FS2115.

On the Nuveen side, the published unit sizes run: Matalan 43,882 sq ft in Unit 6a, B&M 36,100 sq ft in Unit 6b/c, Boots 10,000 sq ft in Unit 5, Next 7,660 sq ft in Unit 4b and Cancer Research UK 7,660 sq ft in Unit 4a. That last one is worth a second look: a charity shop in a unit the same size as the Next next door says something about what large-format space in Norwich is now worth. Also listed as trading here in September 2026 are Nike (a factory store), Clarks, H&M, Hobbycraft, Poundland, JD Sports, Card Factory, Argos, Greggs in Unit U2B, Costa, a Starbucks run as a 23.5 Degrees franchise and a McDonald's.

The Argos question

We cannot tell you whether Argos still trades here, and nor can anyone else. Both letting agents still list it among the occupiers in September 2026. Norwich City Council's Shopping Floorspace Monitor of October 2023 records that "a medium sized unit has been vacated by Argos". And Unit 3 — 20,058 sq ft over two floors, at a passing rent of £333,000 a year — has been marketed since a brochure dated 9 May 2025, offered by Rapleys for Sainsbury's as an assignment of a lease expiring on 28 September 2026. Those three things cannot all describe a healthy trading store; they also do not add up to a closure anyone has announced, so we are not writing one.

Arrivals and departures

There is no trade-press record of a single letting, opening or closure at this park. None — a consequence of there being no operator putting out announcements. The only dated movements anyone publishes come from the council's own retail monitor:

• Mothercare closed in 2020 or 2021 and its unit was still empty at October 2023. No unit number, no size, nothing since.
• Argos had vacated a medium-sized unit by October 2023, as above.
• Greggs took one of the smaller vacant units by October 2023.

The Big W that may never have been

The consultant who master-planned this site lists Big W — Kingfisher's short-lived out-of-town Woolworths format — among the pre-let anchors alongside Boots, Next and Argos. But the Woolworths Museum's own history of Big W does not mention Norwich anywhere: it names Edinburgh first in May 1999, then Glasgow's Forge, Bristol, and Bradford, Rotherham, Tamworth, Coventry and Redruth for the millennium year. Whether a Big W ever opened at Riverside is unresolved. An agent's project sheet says it was let; the format's own historians do not list the town. The Matalan and B&M boxes are exactly the shape one would have left behind.

Next door, and not part of this park

The Riverside Entertainment Centre on Koblenz Avenue is Landsec's, not Nuveen's, and covers roughly 225,800 sq ft: an Odeon of about 58,749 sq ft, Hollywood Bowl, GraVity Active, PureGym, Nando's, TGI Fridays, Wagamama, Five Guys, Bella Italia, Estábulo Rodizio Bar & Grill, Mulligans and the Queen of Iceni, a Wetherspoon, on 01603 630211. A 2018 leasing brochure for the same scheme lists Frankie & Benny's, Pizza Hut, Chiquito, Coast to Coast and Las Iguanas, most of them now gone — that side turns over fast. We could not check its hours: its own opening-times page returns a 404.

Useful to know

Accessibility: almost nothing is published

No accessibility information exists for this retail park. There is no operator to publish an access statement and neither letting agent carries one. No Changing Places toilet, Shopmobility scheme, mobility hire, blue badge bay count, accessible-toilet location or step-free route description could be found anywhere. Parkopedia records that disabled spaces exist and says nothing further. AccessAble holds a guide to the Next store here — the only accessibility survey in existence for this site — but its page returns a 403 to us. If access matters, that is the document to look for.

Toilets, cash and the rest

No public toilets, baby-changing, cash machines, Wi-Fi, lost property, quiet room, lockers or dogs policy are published for the park by anybody. Be precise about what that means: it does not mean none of these exist. A park with a Morrisons and a McDonald's will have toilets and cash machines. It means there is no landlord publishing a facilities page, so nothing can be confirmed in advance.

The one exception is the food store, which documents itself properly. Morrisons here has a pharmacy on 01603 766265, a café, bakery, butcher and fishmonger counters, a car wash, Click & Collect, two rapid EV bays and its quieter hours. There is no park gift card, because there is no park operator to issue one.

Electric vehicles

This is one area where Riverside is unusually well served. There is a Be.EV rapid charging hub on Albion Way with fifteen connectors, which Zapmap and PlugShare agree on. They agree on nothing else: Zapmap describes five devices carrying CCS at 300kW and CHAdeMO at 50kW, PlugShare ten 150kW CCS units and five 50kW CHAdeMO. Access is by Zap-Pay, the Be.EV app or web payment; support is 0800 917 3208. No opening date is published and no Be.EV announcement names Norwich — its publicised retail-park programme covers Newark, Scunthorpe and South Normanton instead. Add Morrisons' two rapid bays and this is a genuinely usable charging stop, whichever numbers are right.

Norwich has no Clean Air Zone and no ULEZ-style charge. Driving here costs you nothing but the car park's time limit, which is the thing to watch.

How it got here

Railway land, and a consultant's project sheet

The best account of how this park came to exist is not from the owner, the council or the press but the project record of Chase Sinclair Clark, the consultancy that master-planned the scheme. It was appointed on a joint instruction from Gazeley Properties and Railtrack, which tells you what the site was: 42 acres of former railway and industrial land in central Norwich, between the station and the River Wensum. The firm calls it "the most significant redevelopment in Norwich for many years", and on the evidence of what is there now that is not an exaggeration.

The scheme as planned was a mixed-use quarter rather than a retail park: an 85,000 sq ft Morrisons with a petrol filling station, pre-sold to the grocer; 165,000 sq ft of non-food retail with Boots, Next, Argos and Big W named as anchors; a multiplex cinema, ten-pin bowling, restaurants and bars; an indoor swimming pool; and 200 apartments. That is why a council swimming pool sits inside a privately-developed quarter, and why the cinema and the shops have always had separate owners — they were separate elements of one master plan.

Nobody publishes an opening year for the shops. Not the owner, the agents, the council or the consultant, whose project page carries no dates at all. The Norfolk Record Office holds a catalogue entry titled "Norwich Riverside development" which is very likely the best primary source that exists, and its catalogue blocks automated access.

The one part of the quarter that is dated is the cinema. Cinema Treasures records that the fourteen-screen multiplex on Wherry Road opened on 26 November 1999 as a UCI and was taken over by Odeon Cinemas Group in October 2004 and renamed — so the leisure half of the master plan was trading by the end of 1999. That indicates when the shops arrived; it does not prove it, and we have not turned it into an opening date for the park.

What the council actually thinks it is

The only firmly dated event in this park's life that anyone has published is administrative. In August 2013 Norwich City Council removed Riverside from its Primary Retail Area and redesignated it as part of the Large District Centre, counting it in the city's shopping floorspace statistics from that point.

Paragraph 25.2 of policy DM25's supporting text shows what that means, and it contradicts the way almost everyone online describes this place. The council names Hall Road/Barrett Road and Sweet Briar Road as Norwich's two genuinely out-of-centre retail warehouse parks, adds Sprowston Retail Park in Broadland and Longwater Retail Park in South Norfolk, and sets Riverside apart: it and Cathedral Retail Park are "the two fringe of centre retail parks", with Riverside "regarded as a Large District Centre in its own right". Proposals here are assessed under the policies that apply within the city centre. In plain terms, the council treats Riverside as a piece of Norwich's town centre built like a retail park — a consequence of the site being a few hundred yards from the station rather than out on a bypass.

The council's Shopping Floorspace Monitor of October 2023 put vacancy across that Large District Centre at 9.6% of floorspace and 11.8% of units, up from 4.9% and 8.5% twelve months earlier. Those are not Riverside's own figures — the same total covers Magdalen Street, Anglia Square and St Augustine's Street. What it says specifically about Riverside is that Greggs had taken a small vacant unit, Argos had vacated a medium one, and the Mothercare that closed in 2020 or 2021 was still empty.

Ownership: one link, and a twenty-five-year gap

Nuveen Real Estate owns the shops today. That is stated on both agents' listings and it is the whole of what is published: no price, no date, no named fund, no percentage and no previous owner, and no trade press has ever reported a transaction here. An Estates Gazette headline, "Morrisons to anchor Norwich Riverside", is indexed, but the article 403s and carries no visible date. The chain has two evidenced points, the developer at one end and Nuveen at the other, with a quarter of a century between them that nobody has written down.

The three landlords are worth restating, because online write-ups blend them constantly: Nuveen owns the retail park, Morrisons owns its own store with Motor Fuel Group running the forecourt, and Landsec owns the Entertainment Centre.