Gary Neville is well known for making his mark on the football pitch for Manchester United and England.
When his £400m St Michael's development is finally complete, he will have made a lasting mark on the landscape of his home city.
As the scheme hit a significant milestone this week, the TV pundit and businessman sat down with the Manchester Evening News to share his inspiration behind the project - and why it means so much to him.
Try MEN Premium for FREE by clicking here for no ads, fun puzzles and brilliant new features.
Mr Neville also addressed the criticism he has received about the landmark development not featuring any affordable housing and whether he ever thought about giving up on his dream.
The project is certainly not a small undertaking. When complete, the £150m No 1 St Michael's will comprise nine floors of office space while global restaurant brand Chotto Matte will occupy the rooftop with two food and beverage outlets situated on the ground floor.
The £250m phase two is a 41-storey tower which will be home to a 162-bed, five-star international hotel brand as well as 217 residences and an additional 75,000 sq ft of office space.
The development will also incorporate a public square which will see the historic Sir Ralph Abercromby pub on Bootle Street retained following a substantial refurbishment.
Earlier this week, Neville admitted he made a 'huge mistake' in the early days of the project. The Sir Ralph Abercromby pub and part of the former Bootle Street police station looked set to be bulldozed, however, those behind the project u-turned after a backlash from conservationists.
"This is a £400m project. I don't have £400m, nothing like that. So to deliver a project where you are essentially investing with partners who are putting the money in, this is the biggest thing I've ever done," Neville said.
As well as Neville's Relentless Developments, the scheme is being brought forward by US investment giant KKR and Salboy, the Salford developer co-founder by Fred Done, of Betfred fame. Manchester City Council is also a key stakeholder.
The scheme is expected bring £120m investment to the city and create more than 3,000 jobs.
"In Relentless Developments we have never taken on another project because we want to focus solely on this," Neville added. "We see it as a great responsibility. We always have and we didn't want to become distracted.
"We've always had a bump in the road along the way whether it was something out of our control or something that we could have done a little bit better. But we're still here; we're persistent, dedicated, we love our city and it's definitely the biggest risk I've ever taken.
"It's a natural progression for me from building my first house at the age of 22 and then doing five barn conversions and then 10. I then moved on to do Hotel Football and then refurbishing a Grade II-listed building in the Stock Exchange and then this."
It's not been a smooth journey since moving from the football pitch and into the boardroom. Some ventures have failed, including two Café Football sites in London and Manchester which closed in quick succession in 2019.
"Every business I've been a part of has been a start-up. We've had eight of them and you do along the way hit obstacles and you make mistakes," Neville said.
"That's happened in the Stock Exchange Hotel in the last week when we closed the restaurant. Food and beverage is tough and we don't do it anymore because we don't do it well. We have to accept that, but we do hotels really well."
All of Neville's post-football ventures have been started from the ground up which, alongside his more prominent role as a TV pundit, has kept him busy since hanging up his boots.
Asked whether he ever thought about packing it all in and enjoying an easier life, he said: "You have moments when you think 'bloody hell this is hard'. You have to have persistence, belief and partners who are willing to drive through the mud with you. There's no doubt about that.
"Start-ups are bloody hard, they really are. I don't know why I keep on investing in starting up businesses because it's hard enough investing in a business that's already on the track and running and have already gone through the pain at the beginning.
"But we want to create something from scratch and have our spirit running through it. We've never lost faith in it but there have been times which have been very tough.
"I finished my football career at the age of 35 with the ambition to not be known as an ex-Manchester United football player and for the next 30 years to be more memorable than the first 30 years of my life. It's pretty impossible as I achieved my dreams and played for the club that I love.
Neville speaks passionately about his ambition for the project that helped him transition from a Premier League star to his post-playing days.
"When we started the project 15 years ago you didn't get world class hospitality bleeding into commercial or residential buildings", he said. That has changed and there's no doubt now that there have been some brilliant developments that have changed that.
"Manchester only has one five-star hotel and it's always blown my mind. I've always thought that, and this is the third-best city in the world, we need a variety in each sector.
"People might say that's really snobbish, particularly from someone who's a Labour Party member. But I feel quite disappointed that's the case.
"This project was born out of my football experiences. I used to travel around the world with United and stay in the best hotels in all of the best cities in the world that we used to play in.
"I used to come back to Manchester and think 'why have we not got these hotels?' and it used to bug me that people thought of Manchester as just a regional city."
Over the years critics have hit out at the St Michael's scheme, and Gary Neville in particular, for not including any affordable housing in the project.
"It would annoy me if we weren't making a significant affordable housing contribution into the millions," he said of the criticism. "We're making a huge affordable housing contribution on this site and to be fair we want to do it.
"What has always been levelled at me is 'how can you build a five-star hotel when we need affordable housing' as if I have the answer to the shortage.
"The real problem is the central government policies around affordable and social housing and not really creating the environment to build houses. They're not interested and they've not built enough houses.
"There are real issues in certain areas around land and construction costs making projects too expensive. I would love to build affordable housing all over the Greater Manchester boroughs.
"I accept that affordable housing is a problem and we need to work together to deliver that but central government needs to bring us the answers. It's a local problem but it's mainly a central government problem.
It's unsurprising that Neville is already thinking about what his next project will be once the St Michael's scheme is complete in around 12 months time.
"In development we'd like to do something along the lines of what we've achieved here with St Michael's", he said. "I wouldn't rule out doing more commercial developments but I think residential and hotels are where the ambition started.
On whether the success of the St Michael's development partly makes up for the feeling of City winning the treble at the end of last season, Neville said: "I'd keep the spades out of the ground if it took their treble away! I can be bought when it comes to things like that!
"When City or Liverpool win trophies or even just regular matches, the fighting, battling young Gary Neville comes back in. But the problem for me is that I can't do anything about it anymore.
"I made a small contribution to Manchester United's success in the time I was there. I'm proud that Liverpool and City never won the league when I was at United.
"It was important to us that our direct rivals locally didn't win things. There has been a change in dynamic in these last ten years.
"To achieve the treble you have to be flawless and City were that last season."
