“Slag heap” or a great tourist attraction?

[Ming the Merciless]

Westminster Council deputy leader falls on sword/pushed under bus.
Melvyn Caplan stepped down immediately after total costs nearly doubled to £6m, up from a forecast of £3.3m.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-58197626

Westminster Council leader Rachael Robathan: "The mound may delight or divide views and that's OK, but we're confident that in the end it will fulfil its original brief - to get people back into the West End and remind them of why this is a world-class city."

Get people back into the West End? Might I humbly suggest that if you want to use a mound to attract people into the West End then perhaps you should put said people-attracting mound actually in the West End. Not in a roundabout some way away from the West End.

Or perhaps it's like a sheepdog. People will flee the mound in an Easterly direction and end up in the West End.

I am looking forward to the sales figures showing a massive uplift and stats on how many people went up the mound. They are measuring usage aren’t they? How else do they know if it was popular?

They could have paid 12,000 (non local) people £500 in vouchers and said cash them in at West End shops. Same cost to council and £6 million uplift in West End sales.