The Florrie on Mill Street brought some much needed Christmas magic to the Dingle last night.
The iconic Liverpool building has been transformed into a “winter wonderland” this festive season providing some keenly anticipated Christmas cheer for local residents.
The small Florrie team have been working really hard behind the scenes during lockdown, putting the finishing touches to a community garden, which has been named as the Tommy Bache Community Garden. and was opened 3 weeks ago. Florrie Old Boy and former boxer Tommy Bache was a local legend in the area and helped to preserve the disused Florrie from further dereliction before its successful restoration. More than a hundred free Christmas trees displayed in the garden were handed out to L8 residents last night. The Christmas tree giveaway is part of a daily community giveaway event which runs from December 5th – December 16th between 5pm-7pm.
Florrie events and business manager, Laurence Fenlon described the last few weeks and last night in his own words: “The Florrie Team has been working throughout the pandemic supporting local residents with food parcels, hot meals as well as the holiday hunger scheme, which we’ve run for the past four years. We usually rely on income from our commercial activities as an events venue, but given the pandemic, it made sense to ramp up our community activities instead, with support from members of the local community who have provided food, donations and even fund-raised on the Florrie’s behalf.”
He continued: “People have just been amazing, the amount of people fundraising, bringing food bags or donations has been incredible, it’s been brilliant. It’s been a very heart-warming time. Ultimately, we wanted to create a memorable festive scene for people round here and it turned out to be a fabulous spectacle last night. All the lights and decorations on the windows really lit up the area and we’ve had some great feedback from members of the community.”
The Florrie are also busy preparing for their regular annual event providing Christmas meals for pensioners, although this year The Florrie will be delivering the meals to them.
Laurence added: “We typically make approximately 1000 Christmas meals over a week at this time of year. This time it will probably be more, and we’ve already lined up a list of pensioners to deliver to.”
Meanwhile, The Florrie is continuing its business development activity into 2021 as a corporate events destination venue with the message that for every business booking at The Florrie, each company automatically donates at least one month’s food and other essential products to vulnerable families and individuals in the Liverpool community.
Find out more here www.theflorrie.org/hire-us/corporate-hire/
All rooms are fully AV equipped with state of the art technology, plus The Florrie can accommodate Covid-safe events with Covid-safe zones/bubbles.
