ONE thing I’ve seen recently is how busy everywhere is.

With Castlepoint flooded with visitors to the point where parking is arduous and Bournemouth town centre bustling as always. Bournemouth is heaving with shoppers.

Boscombe, too, is not excluded from this but one thing I’ve noticed is that despite how busy it is, even during off-hours in the week, it has far less to offer.

The parking garage at the Sovereign Centre always has parking spaces, so many that I’ve never had to park above the ground floor, even on a Saturday lunch time.

When getting parking at Castlepoint or Bournemouth is an impossibility, Boscombe has nearly an empty car park.

So, too, does it have a vacuum when it comes to other things.

One thing I’ve noticed is that, For all the local efforts to help Boscombe flourish, I feel that there’s a gap that, if filled, could make all the difference in bringing business and stability to the area.

The thing is, there isn’t, within Boscombe’s main shopping area, a single “big-name” restaurant.

Indeed, there aren’t really any restaurants at all (unless you count McDonald’s or the pub), until you go further afield from the main shopping centre and up towards Pokesdown or down towards Boscombe Gardens instead.

We have empty buildings and more takeaways and cafes than we know what to do with, but there’s no restaurant in Boscombe centre.

Which means that when Bournemouth and Castlepoint is still heaving, after 5pm, Boscombe becomes a ghost town.

We often see shops and cafes being replaced in Boscombe – small, independent ventures popping up and disappearing.

Many of them are very good – but few people would know it, because people don’t tend to go into Boscombe to eat.

No, they’ll go to the big-name places in Bournemouth, and will never see what else Boscombe has to offer, because there’s nothing to lure them there.

It’s my belief that if we slammed a single TGI Fridays, or Nando’s, or anything like that, into Boscombe, it’d be a foothold into raising Boscombe up from the second-rate spot it currently stands as, in comparison to other places in Bournemouth.

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