One of the most entertaining businesses in Gorham Village in some time recently opened on the first floor of the new Station Square building on Railroad Ave. Owned and operated by Ben Smith, Junction Bowl boasts a twelve-lane bowling alley, a fully staffed contemporary casual restaurant offering American pub-style food, and a video arcade.

So far, Junction Bowl staff is finding that patronage levels at all three aspects of the business are exceeding expectations at all times of the week. Bowling patronage has been especially high on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday evenings, as well as on Saturday and Sunday afternoons.

The arcade features 21 games including a virtual reality game. Smith plans to add a traditional pinball machine in the near future. Already, the arcade is quickly becoming a popular location for children’s birthday parties.

Since opening, Smith said business has been steady at the restaurant to the extent that waits of 30-45 minutes have not been uncommon despite a seating capacity of 128. An additional 20 seats are available at the bar and bowlers can also enjoy food and drinks near the bowling lanes. Patrick Lindsay is the Chef/Kitchen Manager, and Alvah Johnson is the sous chef.

From the time Station Square owners Jon and Cindy Smith first began planning their revitalization project in 2014, they envisioned a bowling alley as a key part of it, as they strongly wanted to make this type of family-friendly entertainment available to residents of Gorham and neighboring towns.

Ben Smith, Jon’s brother, became involved in the project two years ago after working in the banking and financial services industries for a number of years. He worked full-time on the development of the bowling alley project for the past year.

The complexities involved in building a new state of the art bowling alley delayed the completion of the project by a number of months, but Ben, Jon, and Cindy all believe that the public’s positive response over the past two months has made all the difficulties worthwhile. Going forward they hope to contribute to the community by employing as many as sixty full- and part-time workers, with nearly half of them being local high school students.