The Labour leader of Glasgow City Council told his fellow judges which design should win the competition to revamp the city's George Square at the outset of the judging process, two independent council sources have told the Sunday Herald.
And when the judges instead picked a design that Gordon Matheson strongly disliked, he scrapped the project in what the sources described as "a fit of pique".
Although the chairman of the judging panel was officially David Mackay, a partner in MBM Architects Barcelona, the Sunday Herald has been told by two sources that Matheson made it clear at the first meeting that he would be de facto chairman as he was council leader and the redesign was his brainchild, adding that public opposition would not affect the outcome.
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