"Week by week, you can’t have a business,” says Colette, who owns Pancho’s Burritos with her husband Enrique. “It’s our lives,” he says.
So why is this happening? Some traders shared their theories, involving a fire, a fall out and a future renovation:
The email said their five-year leases wouldn't be renewed, and that new trading agreements were coming into effect. These may include rolling monthly or weekly licences, but these would be catastrophic to businesses there, which need long-term stability.
Is the future of Arndale Market at risk?
On Monday, traders at the market — a beloved collection of independent food stalls, hairdressers, and greengrocers on the edge of Arndale shopping centre, received an email from Manchester City Council that sent alarm bells ringing.
I have three court hearings to attend in three months. Two subjects of our reporting are suing us.
Journalism is threatened by abusive legal threats aimed at silencing reporting. The Government needs to #StopSLAPPs.
Please share and write to your MP.
manchestermill.co.uk/three-courts...
It's 1990, and Urban Splash's co-founder Jonathan Falkingham is working at the architecture practice Shed KM, while its other founder, Tom Bloxham, sells posters at Manchester's Afflecks Arcade.
Suddenly, Tom has a lightbulb moment.
Read the full story below:
The company developed the Smithfield building in 1996: It was the one that made city living cool and spawned a market that would grow the city centre’s population from a few hundred to almost 100,000 today.
But the story starts in Liverpool.
How did a building in the Northern Quarter change Manchester forever?
Urban Splash, a development company founded in 1991, had a bold philosophy. When the city centre housed only a few hundred people, Urban Splash suggested it was the place to be - and the suburbs were lesser.
🚨Your Monday briefing has dropped! Catch up on the power outage in the luxury Deansgate West Tower, punting throngs of influencers and Man City players into the cold, dark night.
Plus: Manchester's earned a new title, Starmer's in town, and the city's toads await a refurb.
I love the “nah, they’ll never go to Dundee to check things out there” assumption that he made.
And that they called him on it.
‘Kenna appears to be a businessman for our times: channelling the hallucinations of chatbots and AI hype to conjure his own AI dream, and misleading plenty of people – including MPs and major companies – along the way.’
Incredible piece.
manchestermill.co.uk/is-chris-ken...
We repeatedly asked Kenna to confirm the date of the IED incident in Iraq, his most dramatic war story, which has been disputed.
MSAI’s chief of staff said Kenna was prescribed epilepsy medication after his injury, which has affected his memory — “particularly around dates.”
Kenna told us he’s signed a contract with Lenovo for 10,000 GPUs (graphic processing units to help train AI models) — a deal that appeared to be crucial for MSAI’s business operations. However, Lenovo told us it hadn’t sold a single GPU to the company.
Kenna says he has “raised £50m” to build the Salford data centre, but he has not been able to provide any evidence of these financial commitments. Filings suggest that, as of the most recent update in July 2025, only £1,080 has actually been invested in MSAI — £1,000 of it by Kenna himself.
The Telegraph has celebrated his diversity initiatives, while Prolific North noted his role on the advisory board for TikTok.
A spokesperson for TikTok told us that they do not have an advisory board and that they have never heard of Kenna.
But the more we’ve interrogated Kenna’s claims, the less they add up. Working with @tbij.bsky.social , we’ve found no evidence of any data centre in the works in Salford — or indeed of the £50 million investment Kenna says he has raised.
Kenna claims his company is on course for a £2.5 billion valuation by the end of 2026, instantly transforming the 43-year-old into one of the city’s wealthiest tycoons. Kenna has been photographed at events with local MPs and has been feted in the local press.
The Mill called me during their investigation to see if I’d heard of him. I hadn’t, but I laughed out loud on the phone when I heard his claim of plans for a £2.5 billion IPO this year.
I’ve subscribed to @manchestermill.bsky.social for the last year. The quality of journalism is streets ahead of the clickbait churned out by most local news sites in recent years. Problem is that people are conditioned to getting “news” (or click bait that passes for it) for free…
Trafford leaflet wars While sulking around Altrincham beer gardens on a hot afternoon, my entreaties on local politics affording me leper status, I got a text from a resident who lives in Bowdon, a Trafford Tory ward. His house had been battered with Green leaflets, and one Conservative leaflet designed to looklike a Green leaflet but that actually utlined everything the Greens apparently didn't want outlined in their leaflet. "They are all nuts in different ways," he said. When he pulled up to show me the leaflets in question, he did so in a Ferrari that was, of all things, green.
A lovely detail from @manchestermill.bsky.social
This story is absolutely wild
We checked and there are no such data centres. Our friends @manchestermill.bsky.social visited the supposed Salford location – it’s just a vacant retail unit
Get the full story 🔗
www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2026...
Is Chris Kenna Manchester's first AI billionaire - or a serial fantasist? He claims his company is on course for a £2.5bn valuation, with data centres up and down the country.
But in a collaborative investigation with @tbij.bsky.social, we couldn't find any. manchestermill.co.uk/is-chris-ken...
What started out as mere curiosity developed into a story about two very, very different groups of people: Those who coined the name back in 2020, when it never fully caught on; and those who have a serious stake in the name gaining popularity now.
You can read the full story here...
It was, of course, the new name for Manchester and Salford’s most popular industrial estate, the area where Cheetham Hill meets Lower Broughton near Strangeways prison.
According to the publications just named, this area is now called "The Strange Quarter"...
On Tuesday I decided I’d had enough. For months I’d been followed by a spectre.
It appeared in the Guardian, the MEN, DJ Mag, the Face — in quotation marks, with claims that someone else had said it, that everyone else was saying it, despite the fact that I'd never actually heard it said...
BREAKING: Andrew Milne has been arrested.
A spokesperson for South Yorkshire Police told The Tribune: "Detectives investigating allegations linked to the purchase and sale of freeholds in Sheffield have arrested a man on suspicion of fraud and blackmail."
⚗️ Mohammed Rahman hated science, but when his little boy began asking "amazing questions about the universe" he sought to answer them. Now, his non-profit is breaking down accessibility barriers and fostering a love of STEM for children across Rochdale.
Brighten your Thursday with the full edition:
💻 Eleanor Harry, founder and CEO of HACE, is seeking to eradicate child labour from global supply chains. Since 2020 HACE has expanded its reach to investors via AI-powered data, and set new benchmarks for corporate responsibility.
But Eleanor's not stopping there.
☀️ The Mill's Good News Edition has officially returned, and with it come tales of female-led start-ups going global, a chef-turned-scientist bringing chemistry-based curry extravaganzas into Rochdale’s classrooms, and a student hanging off a bridge to restore public art to Manchester’s streets.
Very pleased to have written a piece (about beer and pubs obv) for Manchester’s best independent news outlet 😮💨