Faced with the possibility of delaying the approval of a redevelopment of the McDonald's on Peace Street, West got on his soap box and decried the council for its tendency to "put things in committee and committee-ing them to death."

In West's view, the city was asking the developer to do things he'd said weren't economically feasible. While the site plan wasn't perfect, West said it met the city's requirements and should be approved.

Mayor Charles Meeker and councilman Thomas Crowder disagreed. They thought the site plan could be made more pedestrian-friendly without great harm to the developer. "I think 'can't' is a relative word," Crowder said.

There are a couple of things at work here, though you'll have to ignore the inherent irony in demanding pedestrian access to artery-clogging grub.

One is the hard truth that needlessly delaying the approval process for developers costs them money, and could open the city up to a lawsuit.

Of course, that doesn't mean every developer who cries hardship should be believed, but it does mean the City Council can't follow every whim as it reviews a site plan -- especially when that plan has met the city's own basic standards.

On the flip side, the city has spent lots of time and money developing planning guidelines for different parts of the city. The purpose of those guidelines is to encourage development to meet a certain standard, and to ensure some continuity between clusters of projects.

Depending on who you talk to, Raleigh's planning approval process is either a rubber stamp for developers or a bureaucratic black hole. In the case of the the Peace Street McDonald's, the building is either a perfectly fine modern fast food joint or a clunky addition to the trendy Glenwood South.

The reality is probably somewhere in the middle, though officials should keep in mind this is a McDonald's and Glenwood South is not Brooklyn.