The town has experienced considerable residential development in recent years and is located at an important intersection, with main roads leading to Mullingar, Longford, Cavan, Navan and Dublin. The town itself is a busy market town with established services and limited retail outlets.

This is about to change with the addition of its first Shopping Centre. Castlepollard Shopping Centre is a new development covering 1,500 sq. m. with the considerable attraction of Tesco Express as the main anchor tenant. It has six other units ranging in size from 120sq. m. to 140 sq. m. with proposed uses ranging from Pharmacy, Cafe, clothing store, Dry Cleaners, Fresh Fruit & Veg shop, Furniture shop, Shoe shop, Camera shop and Bookmakers.

The Promoters hope to have a Medical Centre located on the first floor with lift access. They are very keen to see a Medical Centre in the development, particularly a specialist facility, possibly a wing of some major clinic that would serve a specific need for the surrounding area. With towns like Mullingar 12 miles, Tullamore 30 miles, Longford 25 miles, Cavan 25 miles, and Navan 25 miles away, this centre of Ireland location with the use of 70 car spaces is the ideal location for such a project. With decentralization on the tip of every ones tongue this is ideally advantageous for a city based operator to branch out.

"This is a great opportunity to lease a store in a new shopping centre, " said Garry Corroon of Sherry FitzGerald Davitt & Davitt who are managing the letting of the Centre and who have been involved in the auctioneering business in Castlepollard since the early 1980s. Garry says the Tesco store will be open before the end of the year and that the other units will be trading within the next six months.

The promoters say we are trying to introduce new shops to the town, "The arrival of Tesco brings a big retail name to Castlepollard and will help attract other retailers to the centre, which will fill a gap in the local retail scene. We thought very carefully about the type of business we want to attract because we want to compliment the existing retail offering in the town centre."

Castlepollard has a catchment area at the moment of approximately 3,500 people within a 10-minute drive of the town. The N4 new dual carriageway to the Capital is also only 10 minutes drive.

Castlepollard is one of a handful of small towns in the country that had a new Sewerage Plant built in the nineties with a capacity for 3,000 houses. Over the past five years 500 residential planning's have been granted in the Castlepollard area, 100 of these are now constructed and occupied. A further 100 are presently under construction. If the population continues to grow, by the year 2015 Castlepollard will be the highest populated area in Westmeath after Athlone and Mullingar.

A major vote of confidence in Castlepollard was the building of the new Westmeath County Council One-stop Shop in 2002 and the new Community College in 2003. The proposed new Retail & Business Park of 6,500sq. m. at Mergon International, together with this new Shopping Centre will bring more employment to the area.

For families moving to the area Mergon International, are one of the main businesses and employers in the town, manufacturing high quality moulded parts and currently employing approximately 180 staff.

Other local employers are Iralco Ltd. in Collinstown and St. Peters Hospital in Castlepollard. The new Tesco Shopping Centre will bring approximately 70 new jobs to the town and an estimated 15 million spend on the project, which includes 42 Residential units.

The area is one of outstanding natural beauty with the crystal clear Loughs and unspoilt rolling countryside with Lough Deravarragh & Lough Lene, which are notably famous for their brown Trout. The community is well established and very active with many clubs, societies and community based development associations.