AS I speculated in a letter just over two years ago, the offer by Urban Splash to salvage the Midland Hotel has, indeed, turned out to be a Trojan horse for development on the adjacent site.

I still believe the loss of this open space would be a huge mistake, deeply lamented by local people for years to come.

My opinion, considering the site's magnificent location, setting and views, is that it should be cleared of its hotchpotch of landscape treatments to form a simple large open green space a seaside park able to accommodate any scale of outdoor activity from the largest and most exuberant concerts to the smallest and most modest of family entertainments.

To those who believe they can simply build their way out of the kind of mess Morecambe has been allowed to become, such an elementary solution will appear unexciting and from a developer's point of view unprofitable.

This is why I chose not to throw £50 away on buying an opportunity via the architectural competition entry fee to explain my thoughts graphically.

Instead, I have opted for this means of asking local people, when considering the short-listed schemes, not to forget the mistakes of the last two dynamic' developments on this site and to consider the kind of solution I outline.

I'm thankful that Urban Splash are the developer here, and not the outfit which has been allowed to so shamelessly wreck the Grade II Kingsway and Bridge House buildings in Lancaster.

But I hope they don't spoil by over-development the very thing that brought them here in the first place.

In this instance, I can't help feeling that less will be more.

David Howard, architect, Lancaster