Talk:Central Milton Keynes shopping centre

Name

I deliberately created one page covering both thecentre:mk and Midsummer Place because:

• from the point of view of a shopper (or a geographer) they form one shopping centre, and
• the combination can claim to be one of the biggest shopping centres in Britain (note that the management of thecentre:mk include Midsummer Place in some statistics such as the gross letting area).

But there is no commonly used name for the combination, and so I had to find a name for the page. I chose to call it Central Milton Keynes Shopping Centre. I also considered using:

• "Central Milton Keynes Shopping Area" - This is what appears on the plaque from the 1979 opening ceremony, but the name seems to be used to include everything up to Avebury Boulevard.
• "Milton Keynes Regional Shopping Centre" - In the 1990s there were roadsigns to the "Regional Shopping Centre", but this description seems to be no longer used.

JonH 14:28, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Agreed - modern signs point to TheCentre:MK, which would not be accurate. Excellent article! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Concrete Cowboy (talk • contribs) 16:46, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Shop names

I had tried to write this article without mentioning the names of any shops. My thinking was that if one store is named the others will also want to be included, and we are advised that Wikipedia should not be a directory. But perhaps I was being eccentric. JonH 17:10, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

I see there are similar thoughts at WP:WikiProject Shopping Centers/Anchors and tenants. JonH (talk) 16:04, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Trivia

There is a Wikipedia guideline to avoid trivia.

Being named the "World's Longest Shopping Mall" clearly merits inclusion. But I am not sure if it is still true (even if it once was) because there are bigger newer malls in the List of largest buildings in the world and they may also be longer. I think a solution is to add at a suitable point in the Development section something like: With a length of XXX metres, it was said to be the longest shopping mall in the world.<ref>Guinness Book of World Records, XXth edition, 19XX, page XXX.</ref> Could someone with access to a copy of the Guinness Book please make such a change.

The advert was shown on Newsnight (I remember seeing it), but all it proved was that the centre had been advertised on television. I guess that applies to all large shopping centres, so it is not very remarkable and I think it could be omitted from the article.

JonH 17:10, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Floor area

The floor area for both centres should be split into two seperate templates for each centre. The two centres, Midsummer Place and Centre:MK are obviously 'seperate', and certainly can not claim to be bigger than the MetroCentre, which (if the current figure is to be believed), makes Milton Keynes Central the largest shopping centre in the U.K.. 84.67.145.16 (talk) 19:22, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

The separation is not that obvious. There is a gap of about 1 metre at roof level, and shoppers just go through a door from one centre to the other (see [1] for a plan). The list of largest shopping malls in the United States shows the type of problems encountered when comparing centres by size. I do not think thecentre:mk and Midsummer Place should have separate articles, but using two infoboxes might be OK. JonH (talk) 16:04, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

"Best-looking centre"

It is clear that some people such as architects like the look of the original building (which is why it is proposed for listing by English Heritage). When I first wrote this article I thought that was succinctly expressed by the quotation from the Buildings of England book, which also covered the facts that the centre had been, but was no longer, the largest in the British Isles. I am minded to remove the bit about other similar complexes: it confuses the issue, and no source is cited for anyone admiring the look of the Merry Hill centre. JonH (talk) 16:04, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Listing has happened

See [2] - I wasn't sure how to go about working this into the article... Tom walker (talk) 15:41, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, I did the update first, then read your post. So is what I've done ok? --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 18:25, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

Believing that the section needs a short description of the reasons for listing, I've added this:

The building, designed by Derek Walker for Milton Keynes Development Corporation, is a good example of Miesian modernist minimalism in glass and steel. It won a number of prizes when constructed and remains a valued element of Milton Keynes.

Clearly this needs citations and may even need a rewrite when the considered reviews come available. At present, we just have a the usual journalists' preconceived ideas in place of facts. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 23:39, 16 July 2010 (UTC)

That's great. As long as we have the facts and a source it's OK. Thanks! Tom walker (talk) 11:50, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

One article, two centres

The structure of the article feels rather muddled and confusing. If one article is to be retained for the two shopping centres (why no Food Court...?) then the structure here needs a good edit so that the different owners, developers, phases, architects etc etc can be somewhat easier to read! I am minded to suggest the one article approach is no longer right, but if the structure of this article was to be improved I could cope with the combined article. Warren (talk) 21:26, 16 June 2014 (UTC)

I believe that we have to go by common usage. The fact that there are 3 distinct buildings each with owned separately is invisible or immaterial to the large majority of users. So we should most definitely have just one article, though of course it can have a (sub)section for each building. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 17:30, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

External links modified

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Harrods and House of Fraser

Rather reluctantly, I reverted an edit that reported the news that Harrods are to take over the House of Fraser store, per WP:BRD. I did this because of the policy WP:Wikipedia is not a newspaper and because it is not about the future of the centre in general but just about one of the shops. I hesitated because, along with JLP and M&S, it is one of the anchor stores. But it is not going to be empty or anything similarly significant, a new tenant is taking over almost immediately. But if there is a consensus that it is important to include it, I will accept that. --John Maynard Friedman (talk) 21:23, 12 December 2019 (UTC)