The Junction 32 retail park off the M62 has become a symbol of the revival of Castleford since the collapse of the mining industry – yet a rebrand of the designer outlet has gone down poorly with locals.<\/b><\/p>\n
The centre has been renamed Frasers Plus Designer Outlet Leeds – despite being around 15 miles (24km) from the city itself.<\/p>\n
Retail giant Frasers Group bought Junction 32 from previous owners Land Securities in 2023. Its stores include Adidas, M&S, Nike and Next.<\/p>\n
“It is not Leeds, it is Castleford!” say shoppers Brenda and Betty.<\/p>\n
The friends are visiting the outlet village for “a bit of a social and a walk around” when they stop to chat to the BBC.<\/p>\n
“We just said how misleading it is to people who are not from around here.”<\/p>\n
It is not the first time the shopping centre has changed its name. It was originally called Freeport Castleford when it opened in 1999 as the biggest outlet development in Europe, creating 1,600 jobs.<\/p>\n
By 2006, the Junction 32 name had been adopted by the then-owners, Hermes Investment Management.<\/p>\n
“I still call it Freeport, you still call it Junction 32,” Brenda laughs to Betty.<\/p>\n
“Nobody is ever going to call it Frasers whatever.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Junction 32 retail park off the M62 has become a symbol of the revival of Castleford since…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":958642,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8814],"tags":[748,393,4884,1860,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-958641","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-leeds","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-leeds","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116571360903688595","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/958641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=958641"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/958641\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/958642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=958641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=958641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=958641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}