While the northern part had no anchor stores, the car park and bus station meant that foot traffic passed through the area, avoiding quiet spots. The interior of the centre originally featured a sculpture by the Czech artist Franta Belsky entitled "Totem". Installed in 1977, it stood on a polished terrazzo plinth in the middle of a fountain. It symbolised the economic history of Manchester and included a representation of a capstan from the Manchester Ship Canal. Belsky originally intended it to function as a water sculpture but this idea was abandoned by the developers. "Totem" was awarded the Medal of the Royal British Society of Sculptors for 1976. The sculpture was later removed in 1987/88 during refurbishment works and discarded. The final building was considered excessively large. "The Guardian" described it in 1978 as "an awful warning against thinking too big in Britain's cities" and "so castle-like in its outer strength that any passing medieval army would automatically besiege it rather than shop in it". The underground railway scheme was abandoned by 1976 and the only deck access was across Corporation Street to another Town & City development in the Shambles. At the official opening, one of its champions, Dame Kathleen Ollerenshaw, Mayor of Manchester, commented, "I didn't think it would look like that when I saw the balsa wood models". The "unrepentant" architects responded that they had provided what they had been asked to provide. Kenneth Stone said in 1978, "We're not responsible for everything in there, but we're not sorry about the decisions we took as opposed to those which were forced upon us." The critics' opinion did not mellow with time, and the centre was described in 1991 as "aggressive externally". "The Economist" noted in 1996 that it had "long been regarded as one of Europe's ugliest shopping centres. ... the epitome of lousy modern architecture ... [the outside] was hated". The "Financial Times" in 1997 called it "outstandingly ugly" and in 2000 "one of Britain's least-loved buildings". The main cause of its poor reception was its external appearance. Most of the centre was covered by pre-cast concrete panels faced with ceramic tiles. The tiles, made by Shaw Hathernware, were a deep buff, variously described as "bile yellow", "putty and chocolate" (some parts were brown) and "vomit-coloured". They inspired the epithet "the longest lavatory wall in Europe" and variations.