Earlier this month 6 ideas were proposed for the re- design of George Square, Glasgow. We blogged about the this and made mention of which one, some of us in the office would have liked. All of the proposals were ambitious and most involved some form of fountain or water feature. £15 million was the budget and in this financial climate it seemed a large price tag for a cash strapped council. The schemes drew strong negative public reaction and because of that the Councillors have decided to drop the idea of a redesign and go for a “facelift” instead, involving the replacement of the red surface of the square, but not much else, by the sounds of it. It was interesting to note that our choice was not the winning design. Yes, someone did win even though it is not going ahead. The winning design was by John McAlsan (the first design we described in our blog) and one can only imagine that he would be pretty annoyed with the council: one minute he learns he has won and the next he is told it is abandoned. You can only feel sorry for those guys. But in saying that it is a brave move of the Council to back track so resoundingly.
Maybe the Council should listen to the public more often and common sense would prevail.
I think it’s remarkable that the council can treat a business with such disrespect, as we all know the amount of time money and effort involved in bidding for any public sector contracts. IT seems to me that the council didn’t do their homework properly and listen to the public voters first of all.