Talk:Retail park

Where used?

Is this term used anywhere apart from Canada? It isn't used in the UK. Bhoesicol 07:58, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Is a "power centre" in Canada like a retail park in the UK or a strip mall in the United States? GCarty 11:11, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

A power centre is not another term a strip mall, although strip malls can be found in a power centre. They are two seperate things. --BoyoJonesJr 18:56, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

I have heard this term used in the United States before. bob rulz 09:48, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

This term is in use in parts of the U.S. but I have never heard it before. It appears to be common in California, Nevada, Colorado, and Texas, and on the East Coast. I found a reference in the New York Times: "The New Goal at Retail Power Centers: Eye Appeal; Bowing to demands by towns to give more attention to design." By RACHELLE GARBARINE. New York, N.Y.: Aug 15, 1999. pg. RE9. Before the "power center" there was the shopping mall with big box stores along a side walk next to a big parking lot. Blah, dull, boring, and ugly but lowest cost construction and rent. Nassau Park and Nassau Park Pavilion in New Jersey were cited as examples of the new power centers: they were to have landscaping, plazas, fountains, and a skating rink, with the extra costs raising project cost and tenant rent by about 14%. A definition of "power center": from the International Council of Shopping Centers in Manhattan (NY) was "open air retail strip with 250,000 sq feet of retail space or more and 3 or more big box or specialty stores." A power center costs more to build, because of the extra money for design and decor, and the extra features, but tends to attract more upscale tenant. The article said 81 power centers were built in the U.S. in 1997. (It would be interesting to see if a merchant at a power center charges more for the same appliance than his competitor at the shopping mall, to pay for the relative poshness of the power center.) Edison 16:15, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

I, too, have never heard this term...and a brief poll of friends scattered over a broad range of US geography shows no one else familiar with it either. If this is term used by real estate developers and the like but not by the general public, that distinction should be made clear. Even the above comment from the NYT implies that it's using a developer term-of-art rather than a phrase most readers would use. Spanghew2fs (talk) 18:29, 9 May 2019 (UTC)

It sounds WP:PR and WP:PEACOCK. It should be changed to something less spectacular, better recognized by non-pr developers IMO.Student7 (talk) 21:11, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

WHERE in Nevada? I lived in western Nevada for nearly twenty-five years, and stumbling upon this page is the first time I've heard the expression. I've also been to the south and the far north of the state, and I've never heard it there, either. The same goes for central and southern California, and central and southwestern Arizona (the latter being where I live now), places I've been many times and in situations where I would've heard it. I usually ended up doing a little clothes shopping on these vacations because the town where I grew up didn't have clothing stores. I've also been to Colorado, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, and all over Utah. If it's an American expression at all, it's probably not a western or southwestern thing. The expression I've usually heard for this sort of thing is "shopping center". Another is ironically the very term that this page purports that Americans don't use: retail park. The town where I live now has a shopping center that would reasonably fall under this "power center" definition, and everybody just calls it the mall, or the outdoor mall. TBustah 22:18, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

The term is used by the ICSC (International Council of Shopping Centers) here on their list of types of shopping centers. It also shows up in the press, for example search "power center site:latimes.com" and you'll see the results. In the press articles they often state "so-called power centers" or put power center in quotes. It's not a common consumer expression, but it doesn't have to be, to be mentioned in this article, the point is that industry does use it. Anecdotally in my opinion, if we had to describe this particular type of shopping center to someone, we might say a "big box center" or some variant on that, and if you Google that, you will also find press using that term, and also in parentheses.I can't speak for Canada, I live in the U.S. and have lived in California, Georgia, DC, and Minnesota so know the regions fairly well.Keizers (talk) 17:37, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

The term "power center" is commonly used by American intellectuals and businesspersons. It is true that uninformed laypersons often tend to use "shopping center" for power centers and strip malls alike, even though the two can be distinguished in that power centers usually have big box stores and are much larger than traditional strip malls. In contrast, "shopping mall," as both mall operators and frequent mall users are well aware, normally connotes an enclosed facility.

It's like how bag-in-boxes can be found in every retail establishment in America with a soda fountain, but most consumers have never heard of a bag-in-box even though they have almost certainly consumed beverages dispensed from one. --Coolcaesar (talk) 18:18, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

LOL, well I added both terms and some additional references. Hopefully that makes people happy.Keizers (talk) 19:22, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

I like the way you have identified exactly how these terms are related but not quite the same thing. Thank you for resolving this dispute! --Coolcaesar (talk) 20:30, 25 June 2020 (UTC)

Contradiction

Shoppers World (Framingham) says that mall is a power center that opened in 1951. -- Beland 23:20, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Move to Power center

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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• Well, there is clearly little or no interest in making such a move at this time, so I will close the discussion and archive it. A redirect from "Power center" to Power centre wil suffice. Edison 18:58, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

• The international group representing shopping center owners, the International Council of Shopping Centers present (2004)reference work has definitions limited to the U.S. At Talk:Shopping mall there is a discussion in which the size classifications for "regional" and "superregional" were held to be inapplicable outside the U.S. because the 2004 ICSC definitions [1] explicitly restrict them to the U.S., unlike the older and obsolete 1999 set of definitions referenced by this article. From a Google search I see that "center" is the more common spelling of "power center" as applied to shopping, with Wikipedia and its mirrors removed, by 377,000 to 48,200. Even discounting cases where "power center" refers to an electrical device, "power center" is the more used term worldwide. It is also the spelling used in the ICSC definition. Therefore I suggest moving the article to Power center and adjusting the usage in the article to match. The article also says the first usage was "Power center" for one in the U.S.

• Add *Support or *Oppose followed by an optional brief explanation, then sign your opinion with ~~~~ Edison 18:33, 7 August 2007 (UTC)
• Support for reasons stated above. Edison 18:33, 7 August 2007 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

This is silly

Having one article at power center and another at power centre is silly and confusing. I'm going to move this to power centre (retail) (keeing the "re" spelling in deference to WP:MOS) and the other one to power center (geometry). I'm going to put a disambig page at power center with a redirect there from power centre. -- Mwalcoff 03:04, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

On second thought, almost all of the links to power center are about shopping centers. I'll just redirect here and use a hatnote. -- Mwalcoff 03:10, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

I moved them back, fixed incoming links, and improved the top disambiguating links. I don't think that parenthetical disambiguation is necessary when top disambiguating links will work just fine. WODUP 07:38, 21 November 2007 (UTC)

Del Amo and Puente Hills. Power Centers?

The article lists Puente Hills Mall, of the City of Inductry, CA, and Del Amo Fashion Center, of Torrence, CA as examples of malls that have been converted to power centers. This is not accurate. Both malls are still fully enclosed (which contradicts the definition of a power center at the start of the article), and feature full line department stores such as Macy's and Sears. Del Amo has added an outdoor "lifestyle" center, and Puente Hills does have a Circuit City, but that does not make a traditional indoor shopping mall a power center. Anyone else agree? (75.50.101.192 22:31, 18 October 2007 (UTC))

SIZE?

It states: A power centre ... [has] 250,000 square feet (23,000 m2) to 750,000 square feet (70,000 m2) of gross leasable area. Yet South Edmonton Common has 2,300,000 square feet and is stated as being a power centre. Is there really a maximum size? 220.110.146.104 (talk) 06:14, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Retail park should not have been merged here

The UK retail park is not at all similar to a true U.S. power center. For examples of the power center in its most mature form, look at Hacienda Crossings in Pleasanton, California and The Market Place in Irvine and Tustin, California (it bridges the boundary between the two cities). It is the sprawling nature of the power center that distinguishes it from other designs. This was a really, really bad merge. --Coolcaesar (talk) 16:09, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for your "helpful" message informing me of your opinion on "my" "really bad merge". For someone who's apparently a lawyer, it seems surprising that you've jumped in without looking at the background.

Going by the line of your argument here and on my talk page ("It looks like you're never visited an actual power center"), it appears your criticism is of the decision to merge what you consider two distinct concepts rather than how that merge was actually carried out...?

In which case, you'll note that a merge proposal and accompanying discussion took place back in 2010- albeit with no clear consensus- and that the article was redirected after that had been outstanding for two years.

You'll also note that I wasn't involved with any of those decisions.

My involvement started with the recovery of the old version of the Retail park article- by then unavailable because it had *already* been overwritten by a redirect!- and inserting it into the Power centre article that others had apparently agreed covered both subjects. That wasn't a decision I'd taken, and while technically I was the one who "merged" the recovered content, I had nothing to do with the pre-existing conflation of the two subjects (regardless of whether one thinks that should have been done or not).

Personally, I'm quite willing to listen a well-reasoned argument against it- as I said, it wasn't my decision to combine the two subjects anyway. However, jumping in with a confrontational attitude like that certainly *isn't* the way to get people on side.

(Users TenPoundHammer (talk · contribs), Student7 (talk · contribs) and Vegaswikian (talk · contribs), who were involved in the process, may also wish to contribute here, along with Coolcaesar (talk · contribs)).

Ubcule (talk) 20:01, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Requested move 25 July 2016

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Moved. (non-admin closure). Anarchyte (work | talk) 11:17, 16 August 2016 (UTC)

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Power center (retail) → Retail park – "Power centers" are a particular North American form of a retail park. If sufficient relevance can be demonstrated, I'm not against re-splitting the articles. But until then, we should adopt the more generic and more international title "retail park", which is at least used and understood in the UK, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, Finland, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Portugal, Italy, Romania, Poland, the Czech Republic and Russia. Specifics about North American "power centers" would be moved to another subsection of this article. -- PanchoS (talk) 21:10, 25 July 2016 (UTC)

• Support per WP:JARGON. "Power center" is real estate broker lingo, and is not used by everyday people. I've lived most of my life in the US, and never once encountered this term outside commercial real estate and B2B retail-industry marketing insider contexts. This totally fails WP:RECOGNIZABILITY; "power center" to the average reader is going to imply either an electricity generating station for an area or the physical plant building on a campus, or perhaps the political power base of a broad region.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  11:09, 7 August 2016 (UTC)
• Support per nom and per SMcCandlish. Retail park is an easily understood descriptive name that applies universally, including so called "power centers". Power center is inherently ambiguous, and even as disambiguated is still ambiguous, and would be well covered as a section within Retail park. I am familiar with US retail parks (by description, never noticed it signposted), and either I have missed out on power centers, or power centers are a promotional misrepresentation. Instead of being central, they are found on outskirts. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:56, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Just noticed the move of this article in 2016

That was an absolutely terrible idea and speaks only to the ignorance and limited research skills of the editors involved (as displayed in the above discussion). Most well-read intellectuals are familiar with the term "power center." Go run searches like "power center shopping" with the site: operator on Google against various major news sites like the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal and notice the vast number of articles returned in response. (Google has supported the site: operator for about a decade.) This is not the Simple English Wikipedia. --Coolcaesar (talk) 06:26, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

• Power center is quite a US promotional term, and needing parenthetical disambiguation even for international recognition, the move to the neutral term was pretty obvious. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:14, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

I think the main issue is that outside North America the term is retail park (in common use) and in North America it's power center (real industry jargon) and with no "common use" term (I'd likely call it a "big box center"). So let's calm down and give one article title to the Brits and Europeans.Keizers (talk) 12:17, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

That is the kind of attitude that is destroying Wikipedia. I've noticed over the last five years that the English Wikipedia has been hit hard by vandalism that persists for years and years, simply because too many American English editors are being alienated by such narrow-minded attitudes. Also, it's not real estate industry jargon -- it's business jargon which most educated persons with a degree from a decent university have heard of (even if they don't use it themselves). It's like how most intellectuals have heard of technical terms like "class action" and "Alzheimer's disease" and vaguely associate them with law and medicine, even if they can't say off the top of their head what they actually mean. --Coolcaesar (talk) 03:09, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

I am very familiar with American and non-American variations of English, and I think you are being over-dramatic.

"too many American English editors are being alienated by such narrow-minded attitudes". I not understand what you mean to say with this.

"like "class action" and "Alzheimer's disease"". I don't agree that "power center" has common recognition comparable to "class action" and "Alzheimer's disease", but more importantly, "power center", unlike "class action" and "Alzheimer's disease", is ambiguous and has serious mis-recogntion potential, especially outside the USA where "power center" for a "retail park" is virtually unheard of.

The lede retains "or power center (North America)", so I am unclear what the issue is, although I have zero concern that it is a Wikipedia-destroying issue. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:39, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

That kind of apathetic denial that anything is wrong is exactly what I am talking about. Here's another example: I just caught and reverted some fairly obvious vandalism that was in an article about a major global consumer brand since 2009. Any American with a high school diploma and an ounce of common sense would have realized that story didn't sound right and would have then noticed that no corroborating sources come up on Google or Google Books. --Coolcaesar (talk) 03:48, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

That was a good revert of unsourced, implausible information. I don't see the connection to the title question for this article. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 04:24, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

The connection is that if well-educated intellectuals were looking at and actually caring about Wikipedia, they would have reverted that garbage long ago (such as within the first year after it was inserted). The reason they didn't is that most of them have concluded that Wikipedia is overrun by people who weren't trained properly in how to write clearly, and that life is too short to waste time on edit wars. Such as when they look up the well-known concept of a power center and it redirects to something that is rather different. The difference is kind of obvious to anyone like myself who's vacationed on six continents twice and made a point of visiting shopping centers and shopping malls on all those vacations. And by the way, I have shopped dozens of times over the years at the granddaddy of all power centers, 280 Metro Center. --Coolcaesar (talk) 03:25, 28 October 2019 (UTC)

Splitting article - retail parks in Europe are only >5000 sqm, power centers in the US are >23,225 sqm

All, it seems like it has been hard to decide what to name this article, and doing more research I have concluded that these should not be in the same article.

In Europe, any shopping center with mostly "retail warehouse units" (UK terminology; in the US we would say "big box stores"/superstores), 5000 sqm or larger, 53,819 sq. ft., is a retail park, according to the leading real estate company Cushman & Wakefield.

In the U.S. this would fall into one of several categories:

• 250,000 to 600,000 square feet (23,000 to 56,000 m²) - a power center - typically anchored by category-killer big box stores incl. discount department stores and wholesale clubs.
• 30,000 to 125,000 square feet (2,800 to 11,600 m²) of gross leasable area - a neighborhood center - typically anchored by a supermarket - so really not the concept of a retail park anyway. (and in the U.S. we rarely have a center under 250,000 sq ft anchored by big box stores)

There are of course variants such as

• Lifestyle center: Upscale national-chain specialty stores with dining and entertainment in an outdoor setting, 150,000 to 500,000 square feet (14,000 to 46,000 m²)
• Festival marketplace: Leisure, tourist, retail and service-oriented offerings with entertaiment as a unifying theme, 80,000 to 250,000 square feet (7,400 to 23,200 m²)
• Factory outlet, 50,000 to 400,000 square feet (4,600 to 37,200 m²)

As such, what in Europe would be a retail park, would in the US be either a neighborhood center or a power center, and perhaps a lifestyle center (Manufaktura in Łódź comes to mind). I think it makes a lot more sense to have both entries, and note in the retail park article the equivalent types in the U.S., and in the power center article the equivalent types in the U.K. and rest of Europe. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Keizers (talk • contribs) 21:44, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

References