Bringing business to Ravenswood: locals discuss suburb's future as vacant shops abound at central precinct

He's seen children grow up, slight changes in the area and the local shopping precinct steadily deteriorate again.

"There used to be four of these seats but three of them are gone and this one is all broken," Mr Scott said.

"There's one bench just around the corner, but it's a bit too hard for me."

When the hairdresser closed down in early 2020, it left four shops in the precinct - the milk bar, post office, pharmacy and IGA, as well as a library.

Five of the shopfronts are empty though, leaving the occupancy rate around the same as when the centre was expanded decades ago. That expansion has, in the end, effectively added empty shops.

When the bakery stopped being a retail outlet, it meant there was nowhere for locals to sit down and grab a bite to eat or a coffee, just the takeaway milk bar.

"The old bakery had chairs and a place to sit down with a coffee - we miss that," Mr Scott said. "There hasn't been much come in here for a long time. On the whole, it's not a bad place though, could just use that sort of place for a sit-down coffee."

It was a common view among businesses and passers-by in Ravenswood this week when asked what they would like to see to improve the small shopping precinct.

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There was no shortage of foot traffic on Friday lunchtime, with dozens going into the milk bar, the post office staff rarely without a customer and the line at the IGA stretching down an aisle for the lone checkout operator, Lee Harper.

In between serving customers, she said improvements seemed to take a lot of time in Ravenswood.

"I've lived here my whole life and not a lot has happened or changed. It took about three of years of trying to get the car park built, it just takes so long for anything to happen," Ms Harper said.

"You also hear a lot about how dear the rent is for the shops.

"The best thing to do to start with would be to give the place a bit of a clean up."

Cleaning up is something the Ravenswood Post Office is used to.

Staff member Cody Richards said they were regularly having to deal with graffiti on their shopfront, but there was still an opportunity for businesses to give the area a try.

"More could probably be done in cleaning it up with the rubbish and graffiti," she said. "More seating areas outside would be great, too. The one seat that's out there is pretty smashed up."

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As local resident Vicki Smith walked out of the IGA, she said the shops did a decent job in providing what the community needed, but it was lacking one thing - a place to sit down with friends over a coffee.

"It caters for people my age OK. But it'd be nice to have a proper sit-down cafe," she said.

"It'd definitely be worth it for someone to at least try something like that here."

Locals told The Examiner they had long been waiting for a shopfront on the corner next to the ATM to open up as a cafe, but it seemed to be progressing slowly, if at all.

Dianne Brown has been the local pharmacist since the 1970s and agrees that things do seem to take a bit of time to change. She thinks a cafe would be ideal for the shopping precinct.

"If you had a cafe, people could come across a friend that they hadn't seen for a while and sit down and have a catch-up. That's instead of just being isolated in their home," she said.

"It needs a coffee shop and a gathering place."

Courtney McKercher said it was sad to see the bakery and hairdresser close, but it was a "tricky question" to know how to bring back businesses. She said the crime problems in Ravenswood were often overstated, but the recent spate of car thefts was "starting to get beyond a joke".

"Everyone seems to think it's a bad place, but it's got its quiet areas as well. There's no such place in Launceston that's perfect, that doesn't have any crime," she said.

The police station remains unmanned - an issue raised by passers-by, including Kerryn Phillips, who said there needed to be more focus on crime.

"If it was manned, that'd definitely help. More police, and more things for the kids to do," she said.

Yet there was one thing almost unanimous among those attending the shops on Friday - they wouldn't want to live anywhere else.

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