• town of paradise
• sacramento central city

Town of Paradise

Location: Paradise, CA
Client: Town of Paradise

These guidelines are an important long-term tool to help implement the Downtown Revitalization Master Plan for the Town of Paradise. The intent of the guidelines was to preserve the important assets of Paradise's built environment and guide future design to create buildings worth preserving.

The guidelines articulated community values as they relate to the built world. The intent of these design guidelines was to prevent bad design and encourage good design. Like any good community, it is important that there be an openness to 'different' aesthetics and styles. For this reason, the design guidelines did not prescribe a particular design theme or specific materials or color to force uniformity.

The design concept for the Downtown area was to preserve older buildings and provide a continuous frontage of merchandise windows along the sidewalk encouraging shoppers to walk the entire retail area. Parking facilities should not abut the street frontages, especially along Skyline Boulevard and Pearson Roads - where they already exist they should be heavily landscaped. Commercial buildings should be developed along the street face. Signage should be pedestrian in scale and orientation, painted on windows or hanging under canopies. Display windows should be expansive.

The Town of Paradise has a rich and eclectic collection of architecture. These guidelines will help to encourage important dialogue between tradition and innovation for a long time to come.