The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 20:57, 8 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hillier Parker May and Rowden[edit]

Hillier Parker May and Rowden (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)

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Contested Prod twice by User:DGG and User:K.e.coffman .Fails WP:GNG and WP:ORG .Now there company has been bought by CBRE Group. See little need for separate article the information can be included in the CBRE Group article itself. Pharaoh of the Wizards (talk) 16:22, 31 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Companies-related deletion discussions. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 16:38, 31 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of England-related deletion discussions. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 16:38, 31 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Delete as per nom. Four editors in total have raised issues with this article with tagging for notability, lack of references and COI in addition to the CSD and PROD. It was at one stage 8KB long now down to 0.5KB but still not notable. Sorry guys, but this just isn't the place for your "in memoriam" article.  Velella  ^{Velella Talk}   16:41, 31 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete as by far nothing at all convincing and based from what's currently listed, I consider this A7. SwisterTwister talk 17:03, 31 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete -- a non-notable corporation. K.e.coffman (talk) 18:40, 31 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep. This was a company that was in existence for 102 years, and for much of that time was a significant player on the London property scene, and latterly on the national UK property scene. It was sold in 1998 for $69 million – that is not a "non-notable corporation". Inter alia, in the interwar rolling out of shopping parades throughout the UK, "Woolworth’s is known to have collaborated closely with several property developers and their agents, including Hillier, Parker, May & Rowden, Second Covent Garden Properties and Central Commercial Properties, firms which routinely employed their own staff architects to develop parades." (Kathryn Morrison and Paul Stamper, Shopping Parades (Historic England, 2016), p. 15.) Brian Raggett, Senior Director of Hillier Parker, also served as President of the Royal Town Planning Institute. In a memorandum of 1999 submitted by CB Hillier Parker [the firm in its post-1998 incarnation] to a House of Commons Select Committee, it states that the firm "advises the public and private sectors on all aspects of retail agency, investment, planning, development and research". Research reports commissioned from it are cited in reputable secondary sources, e.g. here. The article is not an orphan: it currently has 3 articles linking to it, and no doubt further links could be found/created without too much difficulty. Notability really should not be an issue. The problem is that the article has been created and worked on by enthusiasts who are unfamiliar with Wikipedia protocols and conventions, and have failed to cite their sources, resulting in its current reduction to a stub. This appears to be a classic case of biting the newcomers. They should be guided and encouraged (as, I am pleased to see, Velella has tried to do), not shot down in flames. GrindtXX (talk) 19:33, 2 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. Further to the above, I have now had a chance to look at some of the print sources. Here are some quotes. "The two firms which built up a dominating lead over other estate agents in the multiple shop business [in the interwar years] were Hillier, Parker, May & Rowden and Healey & Baker. ... Hillier, Parker used to advertise in The Times and The Telegraph once a year that it had done business in the following towns, and manage to run through the alphabet from A to Z, giving the name of a town beginning with each letter." (Oliver Marriott, The Property Boom (1967), pp. 15–16.) "In 1922 Hillier, Parker began to issue annual reports regarding conditions in the property market, [and] [t]hese were quoted in the property columns of The Times, and The Daily Telegraph. [In the interwar years,] "Hillier, Parker grew to be one of the two leading commercial estate agents during this period." (Peter Scott, The Property Masters (1996), p. 41.) Those are in addition to several more incidental references in both books to the company or its reports that could be cited. I hope that's enough to persuade some of the deletionists of the company's notability. GrindtXX (talk) 14:24, 4 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment I'm not sure that using pejorative terms such as 'deltionist' is particularly useful here. In any case, occasional mentions in even reliable sources may not be sufficient to reflect WP:SUSTAINED. _Muffled ^Pocketed 15:30, 7 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. It was not my intention to use the term "deletionist" in a pejorative sense: I wasn't aware it had one. I meant it in an entirely literal sense: "one who has voted in favour of deletion". On the more substantive point, I fail to see the relevance of citing WP:SUSTAINED, which is a warning against coverage of topics whose apparent notability is fleeting and ephemeral ("brief bursts of news coverage"). I have quoted statements from two solid, scholarly secondary works that Hillier Parker was one of the two leading commercial estate agents in the UK over a 20-year period; and from a third (Morrison and Stamper) to the effect that it played a significant, if secondary, role in shaping the face of the 20th-century British high street. Incidentally, for those who may suspect I have taken quotes out of context, I have now found that a number of relevant pages from Scott, The Property Masters, are available on Google Books here. GrindtXX (talk) 18:12, 7 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Keep. I have 29 news articles from The Times Newspaper Digital Archive to use as a starting point. With citation reference, and URL to the electronic version, for each one. I confess to being a novice at this. Philjones573 (talk) 20:18, 2 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete Estate agents that did little for a hundred years until getting bought by a bigger estate agents? = non-notable. No in-depth coverage of anything approaching encycopaedic value. _Muffled ^Pocketed 10:42, 3 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete without prejudice, pretty much for the same reasons as Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi; being bought by a notable company doesn't make something notable in itself, and none of the "sources" provided above appear to do anything other than demonstrate that the company existed. While I applaud the enthusiasm of the authors there's nothing really to suggest that this was anything more than a fairly generic mid-sized estate agency—a total value of £42.5 million sounds impressive, but is fairly small beer for a London commercial property developer. (To put that in perspective, the market cap of CBRE—the company which bought Hillier Parker—is around $10 billion, and the average house price in central London is about £2 million.) If and only if sources can be found to demonstrate that this company has itself been the subject of coverage, rather than just passing mentions in stories about other companies or former employees who have gone on to be notable elsewhere, I'd have no problem seeing it recreated. As I've commented elsewhere, there are other wikis like MyWikiBiz and Wikia which would be ideal for hosting this if the creators just want to ensure that the record is kept alive and to have a general place for ex-employees to add their reminiscences, without the obligation to follow Wikipedia's rules on sourcing and notability, but Wikipedia itself isn't the place for it. (Disclaimer: I was the admin who declined the initial request for this to be deleted; I'm also the one who reduced the size of this article by about 90% by removing all the unsourced material; contrary to the accusations made above, this was not a case of "biting the newcomers", this was a removal after repeated attempts by multiple people to explain that Wikipedia is not a free webhost or an appropriate place to build a memorial site were ignored, and that it's not possible to buy notability by making donations to the WMF.) ‑ Iridescent 11:55, 3 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

HPM&R was well known in England between 1900 and 1939. It advertised business and residential property for sale in local papers around the country. Some of them were: Kent & Sussex Courier. Surrey Advertiser. Liverpool Daily Post. Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer. Birmingham Daily Post. Bedfordshire Times and Independent. It managed all of the Crown Estate land in Regent Street and maintained an index of commercial property rents. This is referred in a letter published in The Times newspaper on 20 July 1932. The will of a Senior Partner was published in The Times on 4 Aug. 1950. The company was mentioned in the obituary of Brian Richards in The Times on 20 Feb. 2002.

• Comment: there seem to be a myriad print sources; I'm unsure as to their quality, however. FoCuS contribs; talk to me! 23:46, 3 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete - There appears to be a clear consensus to delete this article. Disregarding the fact that two of the three comments supporting "Keep" are from the same person, and were solicited by the other person who supported "Keep," there's simply not enough material to support a claim of Notability for a defunct company. Exemplo347 (talk) 23:55, 3 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. What has "defunct" got to do with anything? Wikipedia deals in historic notability as well as current notability. And this is the first time I've seen offering guidance to an inexperienced editor described as "soliciting". GrindtXX (talk) 14:24, 4 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The article now has 23 references. Most are to editorial in The Times newspaper. The rest are to British Newspaper Archive; two textbooks; and the company's own literature. I have started contributing to other pages. To Castle_Quay_Shopping_Centre I added the detail about the stone plaque commemorating its opening. Which also explains the change of name of the shopping centre, from Castle Centre, to Castle Quay. To Gamages I have added an account of its auction which was reported in The Times in 1931. I have more source material to add to the article; so it is not finished yet.

Philjones573 (talk) 23:54, 7 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.