The Place and Courier, Charleston SC .

When other cities were tearing down aging inner-city buildings and erecting towering new ones, Charleston resisted. It often was more hard to adapt old buildings for new uses, but Charleston continues to prosper because of those extra efforts.

Similarly, since 1999, Charleston has benefited from the play of the city's Commercial Corridor Design Review Board, which has reviewed the architecture of 850 new projects and 5 times that many minor changes like new signs or landscaping.

Just as the historical district needs good design, so do major corridors throughout the repose of the city. So it is unfortunate that city staff wants to gut that table of many of its responsibilities.

The city's Planning Commission will take the staff's suggestion at its 5 p.m. meeting Wednesday. Members should refuse the proposition.

It is praiseworthy to wait for ways to work doing business in Charleston more inviting. People consume long complained that red tape makes it difficult. But it would be a slip to sacrifice careful planning and public input as a way of devising that happen. If the design review process takes too long, perhaps the board's schedule should be amended.

The room has earned its stripes by refusing to approve early designs of a proposed housing development next to the Angel Oak on Johns Island. (See Samantha Siegel's column on today's Commentary Page.)

There was more to dislike than the buildings' appearance (the project's density, environmental impact and proximity to the tree), but the Commercial Corridor Design Review Panel was able to prevent a boxy, pedestrian development from passing up in a large and tender spot.

The reshaping of the panel is being promoted by Tim Keane, director of Charleston's Department of Planning, Preservation and Sustainability. He says his staff could review most of the projects, leaving the board (renamed the Design Review Board) to think only large projects. The city would determine which are which.

But that in itself presents a dilemma. Mr. Keane, before he took his current post, worked on behalf of the Angel Oak project, which he praised and the panel found unacceptable. Clearly, the process benefits from broader input.

One compromise has been suggested whereby the city would advertise proposed projects. If no one expresses interest in their design, they could be approved without board review.

But yet that is a measure in the faulty way in that public notices can be overlooked easily, and poor design could appear before neighbors and other concerned citizens know to protest.

The face Commercial Corridor Design Review Board might be a full project a month's delay, but it could also relieve the city's important corridors from inappropriate, uninteresting designs.