| Location | Bournemouth, Dorset, United Kingdom |
|---|---|
| Opening date | 27 October 2003 |
| Developer | Kier Build |
| Management | Castlepoint Management |
| Owner | Standard Life Investments, Castlemore Securities Ltd and Threadneedle Investment Properties Ltd |
| No. of stores and services | 40 active |
| Parking | 2 Levels with 3,000 spaces |
| No. of floors | 2 |
| Website | Official website |
Castlepoint Shopping Centre is a retail park in Bournemouth, Dorset, United Kingdom occupying a 41-acre (17 ha) site containing around 40 shops, including major retailers such as Marks & Spencer, Gap, Topshop, Asda, Sainsbury's, and B&Q. It is situated 3 miles (4.8 km) northeast from the centre of town, off Castle Lane West on the former site of the Hampshire Centre.
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The centre opened to the public on the 27 October 2003, following a major redevelopment of the site, which had previously been occupied by the Hampshire Shopping Centre for around 35 years.[1][2] Construction of the centre took over two years and cost some £275 million.[3] On 8 October 2007, the Asda store on site was evacuated for a number of hours after a small fire broke out in the toilets.[4] In February 2008, the inaugural Pancake Race took place to raise money for good causes and was run again in February 2009.[5]
Shortly after the centre opened, concerns about the condition of the car park came to public attention when B&Q was forced to temporarily cease trading whilst the safety of the car park was determined. In May 2005 temporary safety netting was erected in the lower deck area of the east car park and around 1,000 parking spaces were closed to the public after concrete fell from the roof.[6][7] By the 26 May 2005, these parking spaces had re-opened, although the netting remained in place.[8]
On 1 December 2005, the carpark was again closed to the public following further safety concerns.[9] This led to the temporary closure of all stores within the main site.[10] The stores within the East and West Village were unaffected by this closure and remained open, although parking for these stores was limited.[11] Whilst the centre was closed a free park and ride scheme was introduced to take shoppers to alternative shops within Bournemouth town centre.[12] Following repair work, the car parking spaces and stores in the main centre were re-opened to the public in a phased manner between 20 December 2005 and 13 February 2006.[13][14][15][16][17][18]
Although the carpark was made safe with the insertion of props and the stores in the centre re-opened (and remain so), the longer term solution for rebuilding the carpark is still to be resolved.[19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27]
Castlepoint has 40 stores and restaurants built over 645,000 square feet (59,900 m2) of retail space. Since opening in 2003, several stores have ceased trading at the centre such as Principles[28], Virgin Megastores, Suits Direct, All Sports, Barratts, Choices Video and Lunn Poly (later Thomson). After the sale of Virgin Megastores in the United Kingdom, the stores were re-branded as Zavvi and after going into administration in 2009, had some of their sites sold to HMV, which currently operates the site at Castlepoint. The following list of retailers are trading at the centre as of May 2009:
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The centre has numerous places to eat and drink including Frankie & Benny's and Nando's in the East Village and in the main centre Costa Coffee (in WHSmith), Caffe Nero (in Waterstones), McDonald's (in Asda), Thorntons Cafe, Cafe Revive (in Marks&Spencer), Sainsbury's cafe and Bar 39.
The car park is free to use, has space for 3,000 cars over two levels and is monitored by 109 digital CCTV cameras.
The Centre is served regularly by Local Bus operators such as Yellow Buses and Wilts & Dorset who use the "More" branding as well as their standard Wilts and Dorset branding. Below is a list of services which serve the Centre from 2011 onwards.
Yellow Buses RATP Group
Wilts and Dorset Go Ahead Group
March 2004 - Jacqueline Wilson[32]
August 2009 - Katie Price (aka Jordan)[33][34][35][36]