The DDRC can say no to a demolition or design but in the end they have very little in the way of legal rights if the developer decided they wanted to fight them.

We saw this in Bricktown (slightly different design standards but same general constructs) with House of Bedlam, where the committee kept wanting Johnson to change his design and he did make some changes, but in the end they even said in the meeting they had no legal right to deny what he had planned. A similar situation occurred between OCURA and Randy Hogan over Kd's.

These committees work more on the basis of suggestion and hope that the developer will comply in order to get quick approval. But if you watch the DDRC meetings on-line, it's a very friendly type of situation where a committee member will say something like "I'd really like to see more landscaping on the east side" and the developer will respond, "Sure, we can do that".

The developers already know the development guidelines and rarely submit plans that are way over the line in any area. The City staff writes a preliminary report about what items are in compliance and what is not, along with a recommendation to approve, approve with conditions, or not approve. But in many cases where the City suggests rejection, the committee approves anyway.

In other words, they have a lot more power to override guidelines than to affect change on any project that already meets them. And the guidelines are pretty basic stuff and in themselves do not come close to guaranteeing great development.