Designs for central Manchester park to replace faulty fountains with flexible events pavilion

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The plans include an events pavilion on the site of the park’s broken fountains

Manchester city council has unveiled plans by LDA Design for a long-awaited overhaul of Piccadilly Gardens in the heart of Manchester city centre.

The two-phase project will remove the park’s unreliable fountains, increase the amount of green space and upgrade a neighbouring transport interchange.

Piccadilly Gardens sits at the centre of Manchester’s shopping district but has gained a reputation for antisocial behaviour, drug-use and crime, and for having an increasingly unkempt appearance.

The city council has been promising to revive the area for years, running a competition in 2022 for a £25m scheme which would transform a 10-acre site comprising the park and surrounding streets.

A previous scheme designed by LDA and Urban Edge, which proposed replacing a concrete pavilion  - Tadao Ando’s sole UK project - with a restaurant building, was scrapped in 2017 after its developer Legal & General said it was unviable.

LDA’s latest scheme would retain the pavilion but add a new flexible structure for events on the site currently occupied by the park’s broken fountains.

The council has pledged to “put the gardens back in Piccadilly Gardens” with more trees, greenery and floral displays aiming to improve the look and feel of the area.

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More floral displays and greenery will be introduced to brighten up the look and feel of the park

A dedicated police team would also be stationed around the park to reduce anti-social behaviour, with an increased police presence influencing the design of the scheme including the position of lighting and CCTV.

Council leader Bev Craig said: “Manchester City Centre has grown and changed, and there are lots of exciting things happening in our city. We need Piccadilly Gardens to up its game and play its part in welcoming millions of people into our city every year.  

“People tell us they want it cleaned up, brightened up, invested in and made to feel safer. It’s still called Piccadilly Gardens and we’ve heard loud and clear from Manchester people that they want its appearance to do more to reflect that name. 

“We’re going to give them more greenery and more flowers as part of a co-ordinated range of measures to improve the look and feel of the area.  

“We know there are aspects of Piccadilly Gardens that no longer work – in the case of the fountains quite literally – and we’re determined to ensure the space looks better and feels better.”

Initial works which do not require planning permission will start once this year’s adjacent Christmas Markets finish, with more significant interventions requiring planning consent starting in a later second phase.