Talk:Northland Center

The first?

Surely this is not the first suburban shopping mall. Shoppers World, Framingham opened on October 4, 1951. It was an open, circular mall anchored by a major urban retailer with strips of other stores and parking surrounding it in a suburban location far outside Boston. And I think it too wasn't the first... --216.49.153.98 11:29, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

The Detroit Free Press article linked in the reference section states that Northland was the first. Jtmichcock 12:06, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Although I should probably place this comment at the end of the thread, Northland's claim is an indoor shopping mall anchored by one or more department stores. This is closest to what is meant by a modern shopping mall, and current boasts of size depend on this definition. MMetro 02:30, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

The priority question is complex. There were clearly a number of previous suburban shopping malls [1], but a case can often be made for being "first" by adding enough qualifying adjectives. A reference to a local news source is not the best, because these media are easily influenced by the public relations departments of their largest advertisers. --Blainster 21:01, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not original research. The Detroit Free Press article states that Northland is the first and I have yet to see any authority cited to justify changing that. It is not enough to baldly assert that a newspaper that's been around for over 150 years is "easily influenced" without giving any references. If there are contradictory authorities, cite those. None of us are in a position to blithely dismiss original research sources like the Free Press or equivalent media. Jtmichcock 23:01, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps you overlooked the university study I cited. Finding conflicting sources is not unusual, and in this case the academic source is the one to be preferred. The university study lists several earlier examples. Also, the Free Press story didn't call it the first "suburban shopping mall", it called it the first "regional shopping center", not quite the same. And when you do revert, please don't wipe out other edits that have nothing to do with the reason for reversion. --Blainster 10:28, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Macy's

The page lists two different sizes for the Macy's store. I'm not sure which is right... Hopefully someone knows the answer.

According to this lease plan, Macy's (Marshall Field's at the time the lease plan was made) is 511,509 SF. TenPoundHammer 19:09, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject class rating

This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as stub, and the rating on other projects was brought up to Stub class. BetacommandBot 05:16, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Clean-up

This article needs some major work. I'd suggest going to other metro area mall pages to see how much more well-organized these are. The very first thing I'd suggest is combining the "Loss of anchors" and "Financial trouble" categories into one. In fact, it might need even need a header. It could just as easily be slipped into the existing "History" header, which needs to be trimmed down. There also needs to be a "Description" header before the "History" describing the physical dimensions and such of the mall. Again, go to other mall pages to see how to do this correctly, because this is a mess. --Criticalthinker (talk) 12:00, 29 January 2015 (UTC)

Tunnels

The following article has some interesting trivia about some massive tunnels beneath this mall. It might be a neat trivia fact to add into the article. link to article