YOU report (The Press, April 27) that in Piccadilly, within York’s Historic Core Conservation Area, a handsome 80-year-old period building, Swinson House, is to be destroyed to build an unlovely six-storey “hometel”, next to a thousand-year-old Grade I listed building, St Denys's Church.

If a hometel is homes, why not create them, with far less damage to the climate and the streetscape, within existing Swinson House, as Helmsley Group is admirably doing not far away in Ousegate House?

But if a hometel is a hotel, why build it within 150 metres of three large hotels already there?

I’m addressing these questions, with no expectation of a response, to York developer North Star, “Yorkshire’s premier creative property asset management company”, which actually prefers not to develop, but rather to destroy and replace – witness its grotesquely incongruous “modern medieval” aparthotel under construction inside Micklegate Bar.

Of that it recently stated: “The new hotel will be a great addition to this magnificent street, and we are pleased to have successfully completed the demolition stage…”

No further comment.

John Heawood,

Eastward Avenue,

Fulford, York

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