“You can see why we’re calling it a neighbourhood, right?” says Dan Mullen, one of the founders of Ramona and The Firehouse. With Adelaide Winter and Joel Wilkinson, they launched the outside-inside Detroit pizza and BBQ chicken-meets-vogue-runway spot on the site of an old MOT garage on the edge of Ancoats and the NQ in the middle of lockdown.
Their new project is a different ball game. Actually, it’s a different sport altogether. ‘Neighbourhood’ does indeed fit the bill, and this site is pretty much as big as one. They’ve taken on the former Presbar Diecast works, just beyond the arches which once housed the Warehouse Project, between Ducie Street and Store Street.
And it’s enormous, spread over 250,000 square feet. You could fit many, many Ramonas inside it, and still have room for an Olympic size swimming pool and a couple of football pitches. Maybe three football pitches. It’s bewilderingly huge.
