Wikipedia:Notability (shopping centers)

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This is the first draft of a page intended to establish the notability of individual shopping centers or malls. It is based on the basic Wikipedia guidelines for notability.

A management company or developer may own or operate several such malls in one city or metropolitan area, however, articles on individual properties under such a developer's portfolio should be counted as being for one mall. Nothing in these guidelines is intended to establish notability for shopping center owners, developers, or tenants, articles for which should be evaluated under the Wikipedia notability guidelines for companies and corporations (WP:CORP).

Some articles on shopping centers may be written in order to promote or advertise a particular mall. Many Wikipedians are strongly averse to the use of Wikipedia for advertising, and the assertion that Wikipedia articles are not advertisements is an official policy of long standing. Advertising is either cleaned up to adhere to the neutral point of view or deleted. In the latter case, it is listed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion.

Also, some articles on shopping centers may be written with only the most basic information about location, tenants and operating hours, and contain no information that would be encyclopedic. Many Wikipedians are strongly averse to the use of Wikipedia for directory listings, and the assertion that Wikipedia is not a directory is also an official policy of long standing. Directory listings are either cleaned up so that the article adheres to the neutral point of view and basic guidelines for notability or deleted. In the latter case, it is listed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion.

If this proposed policy becomes accepted, the guidelines listed on this page may be applied by editors in deletion debates. This page provides guidance about how to establish notability, but is intended to be advisory only and is not binding except insofar as it references policy pages. The major relevant policy pages regarding notability on Wikipedia are What Wikipedia is not: WP:NOT and Verifiability: WP:V.

1 Criteria for individual shopping centers
- 1.1 Assertion of notability
- 1.2 Assertions to be rejected
2 See also

[edit] Criteria for individual shopping centers

Shopping centers are usually notable if the scope of activities is currently and/or historically large enough in scale to warrant multiple, non-trivial published works of credible and reliable secondary source material to be written about it, produced independently of the mall owner or developer. Malls at or larger than 800,000 square feet (74,000 square meters) of gross leasable area fall under this category in many cases since they are considered "super-regional malls." Because of the commercial nature of malls, such sources are much more likely to come from the popular press (i.e, newspapers) rather than peer-reviewed journals and/or scholarly books, although scholarly sources do exist in a few cases. Such information should be nevertheless able to be verified by a third party source.
If an individual mall can be clearly shown to have significant cultural, social and economic impact on the local and regional market area, as supported by multiple credible and reliable secondary source materials, and especially (but not exclusively) if such impact approaches a national level, the mall is considered notable. The article should discuss such impact in sufficient depth. See the guide to writing better articles to help you in forming an acceptable article.
Individual tenants in notable malls are (in most but not all cases) not inherently notable, and do not warrant a separate article unless sufficient notability for the tenant itself (especially if it fits the criteria of WP:CORP; i.e., national department store chains, etc.) is established through reliable and verifiable sources. In many cases separate articles exist for mall tenants if they are major regional and/or national retailers. Locally-owned smaller tenants generally are not notable unless they fit the criteria of WP:CORP.
Malls which have verifiable historical or architectural significance are notable.
Smaller malls such as strip malls or power centers whose activities are primarily local in scope (i.e., trading area, the area from which the mall draws customers, is very limited) are usually not notable unless verifiable information from credible and reliable third party sources can be found. Again, if the strip mall or power center can be clearly shown to have significant cultural, social and economic impact on the local and regional market area, and this impact can be verified by such multiple secondary source materials, then the strip mall or power center is most likely notable.

[edit] Assertion of notability

Notability can be asserted for shopping centers through:

Nontrivial inclusion in reliable third party published materials.
A significant amount of non-trivial media coverage that is comprehensive, and that deals specifically with the shopping center as the primary subject. However, note that the listing of a shopping center in local newspapers and community information websites does not alone make the mall notable.

[edit] Assertions to be rejected

The following may be presented as evidence of notability, and should be rejected as such.

Documents produced by the owner or developer of the mall itself should not be used as an assertion of notability. However, they can be used as supplemental source material for an article.
- Internal documents can include reports, newsletters, press releases, magazines and websites published by the owner or developer itself, or any related affiliate or corporate entity it is part of. This applies even if originally self-published material is later reprinted in other sources.