Never mind about the chaos prophesied this year for the closure of St George's Field car park during the St Nicholas Fair (Evening Press, November 20).

We should all remember what is going to happen next year (or perhaps the one after since it is such a huge project) when there will be 1,100 car parking places in the new Coppergate II development added to those already there.

All these spaces will be accessed from Piccadilly. Imagine the congestion and pollution. It is planned that traffic pressure will be eased by providing traffic lights at the end of Piccadilly, at its junction with the inner ring road.

I am sorry for everyone who uses that route between work and home every day. The prospect is appalling. We should all register our worries about this aspect of the new Coppergate scheme.

Grace Hardie,

Bishopthorpe Road,

York.

...MANY people are rightly concerned about the scale of the four-storey buildings fronting Clifford's Tower.

There already exists a more sensitive scheme for this historic area. It lays down that the buildings facing Clifford's Tower are to be no higher than two storeys.

They are to be set back to the line of the Caf Andros, which has been saved by popular demand, leaving a wide area at the base of the mount. The view, which the council feels is important, from Castlegate to the Castle Museum, is preserved.

At the back of the development there is to be a strip of land on the west bank of the Foss left free of building. This makes a natural walkway by the river, and gives it light. These proposals are clearly set out in the council's own Design Brief of 1991. They should be followed and any design which is too large in scale should not be permitted.

Monica Nelson,

York Natural Environment Trust,

Custance Walk,

York.

...AS one of those who so strongly objected to the demolition of the Caf Andros, a Grade II listed building, in the previous proposals for the Coppergate II development, I thank Land Securities for revising its proposals so the little building is now safe. We are grateful to them for listening to the protests of all of us who cherish the familiar little buildings of this city.

It is a shame the developers have not listened to other cries of protest about the scale of the blocks they want to erect beside Clifford's Tower and the Castle Museum. The height and bulk of these seem to be dictated by the need to include all the 'single retail units' - 17 now, one less since the decision to keep the Caf Andros. No one has really told us yet why we need so many more small shops when there are already dozens standing empty in the city centre.

Castle car park developments should be scaled down to what was originally agreed in the Planning Brief in 1991. That is, one single building, set further back from the Foss riverbank and from the natural building line running between the Women's Prison and the Caf Andros.

Alison Sinclair,

Bishopthorpe Road,

York.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.