“They’ve been monumental council mistakes that damaged Piccadilly Gardens,” Pat Karney, the veteran Labour councillor, explained as he surveyed the controversial square this week.

He’s seen it all in Manchester. First elected in 1979, he was instrumental in organising the first Pride in the 1980s, rebuilding town after the 1996 IRA Bomb and encouraging Mancs to come together after the 2017 Arena attack.

One debate has persisted for decades across Coun Karney’s tenure as city centre spokesperson – Piccadilly Gardens.

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Its 2002 Commonwealth Games redesign took it from a sunken flower garden to a Japanese minimalist concrete plaza.

That revamp is controversial to this day. The area’s dreary appearance isn’t helped by entrenched social problems and crime.

Council leader Bev Craig and city centre spokesperson Pat Karney(Image: Sean Hansford | Manchester Evening News)

But for Coun Karney, the ‘monumental mistake’ isn’t the ongoing presence of crime and anti-social behaviour, which are being tackled by the council and police.

It’s something that’s right beneath Manchester’s feet. Descending down a set of hidden steps at the Market Street end of the grass into what was once a Victorian toilet there is a hidden world of wires, water pumps and even an emergency shower, to keep the Piccadilly Gardens fountain running.

Coun Karney (left) and Coun Craig (right) stand next to the water pumps underneath Piccadilly Gardens(Image: Sean Hansford | Manchester Evening News)

It all has to go, because ‘Manchester is done with fountains’, council leader Bev Craig said on Wednesday (March 4), as the Local Democracy Reporting Service was granted exclusive behind the scenes access.

The mistake wasn’t installing a complicated fountain based on ‘pretty pictures’ a quarter of a century ago, according to Coun Karney. It was not getting rid of it sooner after the fountain firm went bust six months after the new Piccadilly Gardens opened.

“When you see the scale and complexity of the fountain underground you will see why we have had problems from its early days,” he said. “The company that built it collapsed six months after it was built and so started years of constant repairs.

The emergency shower installed in the old Victorian toilet block which is now the Piccadilly Gardens plant room(Image: Sean Hansford | Manchester Evening News)

“The Berlin Wall and this flawed fountain should have been removed years ago. They have been monumental council mistakes that damaged Piccadilly Gardens.”

Leaders are pledging a massive overhaul of the space, with the promise of flowers returning. It starts on Monday (March 9) when much of the square is fenced off — some grass and the play area will be accessible — and the ‘rip out’ job begins.

Coun Craig added: “In addressing what’s going on at the surface we have a lot of underground complications. That’s probably why we reached the point thinking we had spent enough making fountains work.

The vision for Piccadilly Gardens’ revamp, opening in summer 2027(Image: Manchester City Council)

“It might not look like much is happening, but behind the scenes there will be people assessing it.”

Improving Piccadilly Gardens is a topic that’s close to Coun Craig’s heart, as she led her first ever political campaign to topple the hated ‘Berlin Wall’ which eventually came down shortly after she became council leader in December 2021.

So why wait three more years to get on with improving the Gardens if she thought it wasn’t up to scratch?

‘It might not look like much is happening, but behind the scenes…’

“We waited because of money and multi-agency commitment,” Coun Craig said. “Cash coming in was limited. The cost of borrowing after Liz Truss’ mini-budget was too expensive. We waited to get the bulk of the spend of the town hall out of the way.

“We could have spent a billion pounds on Piccadilly Gardens, but if we did not have the backing of the police and Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM) for the buses, we would be whistling into the wind.”

The entrance to the unseen chamber

TfGM now has government cash to ‘do up the bus station’ while police can fund ‘extra cops’ for a permanent presence in the area, prompting new designs to be unveiled last October.

Underneath the fountain at Piccadilly Gardens

On the eve of the revamp, council officers say it will re-open in summer 2027. Piccadilly Gardens will ‘be a space Mancunians are proud of once again’ after 25 years.