Paradise Valley Hillside Development Requirements: How Slope Limits What You Can Build

If your Paradise Valley lot sits on a slope of 10 percent or more, the Town's Hillside Development Regulations decide how much of that lot you are allowed to touch. These rules, in Article XXII of the Town's Zoning Ordinance, exist to protect the mountains and foothills the Town is known for, and they get stricter as the ground gets steeper. On a steep estate lot, more than half the parcel can be off-limits to grading or building. This page explains the rule, who it hits, and how slope sets the size of the house you can actually fit.

What the hillside rules do

Article XXII limits how intensely you can develop sloped land. The Town states its purpose directly:

This article exists to establish provisions to: a) regulate the intensity of development; b) preserve and protect the hillside environment; c) provide for the safety and welfare of the Town and its residents.

The rules kick in on any land with a slope of 10 percent or more. The Town treats that as hillside terrain. The heart of the ordinance is a cap on disturbed area, the part of the natural ground you alter by grading, cutting, filling, removing plants, or trenching. The steeper the building site, the smaller that allowed share. The Town sets it on a sliding scale in its Table 1, Slope Category / Lot Disturbance Limitations:

• At a 10 percent building-site slope, you may disturb up to 60 percent of the site.
• At a 15 percent slope, the limit drops to about 34 percent.
• At a 25 percent slope, it is roughly 13 percent.
• On very steep ground past 50 percent, the allowed disturbance falls into the single digits.

So slope, more than lot size, controls how much house and yard you can build. A wash that creates a natural 10 percent slope can pull a parcel into these rules even if the rest of the lot is flat.

Who reviews it and how it limits a build

Paradise Valley does not just apply the table on paper. A Hillside Building Committee reviews every new home on a hillside lot. It looks at land disturbance, grading, drainage, retaining walls, building materials, exterior lighting, and height before any permit issues. The Town requires its approval before earth moves:

Plans for any development in the Hillside Development Area must be approved by the Town and appropriate permits issued before any clearing and grubbing, grading, bulldozing, blasting, or movement of earth is commenced.

The Town of Paradise Valley is the authority having jurisdiction (AHJ) that adopts and enforces these rules, so its hillside committee and building staff, not the county or the state, have the final say. This sits on top of your normal setbacks (the required distance from each property line) and lot coverage (the share of the lot the footprint may cover). On a hillside lot, the disturbance cap is usually the tighter limit.

What this means for you

Check the slope before you buy a Paradise Valley lot, because slope, not acreage, sets your buildable area. For example, suppose you are choosing between two half-acre lots. One has an 11 percent slope and the other a 25 percent slope. On the gentler lot you can disturb most of the site, but on the steep one you may be limited to roughly an eighth of it, which can force a smaller footprint, a tighter driveway, and more retaining wall. Two lots the same size can support very different homes.

Build the hillside review into your schedule and budget. The Hillside Building Committee is an added approval step before your building permit, so it adds calendar time a flat-lot build does not have. Plan the disturbance limit, drainage, and retaining walls into the design from the first sketch, because reworking a footprint to fit the cap is one of the more expensive corrections here. You can look up a parcel's slope on the Maricopa County Assessor parcel viewer to get a rough read before you make an offer.

This entry is a city-special topic in the Paradise Valley module. The codes your home is built to are in Paradise Valley Adopted Building Codes , and what you file for the permit is in Paradise Valley Residential Building Permit Requirements . For the lot-buying side, see how to buy land to build a house in Arizona , and for the full journey, the steps to building a custom home in Arizona .

Source

The hillside review and permitting are run by the Town of Paradise Valley Building Department . The purpose, the disturbance limits, and the review process are set in the Town's Zoning Ordinance, Article XXII, administered by the Hillside Building Committee . The Town's building codes are in the Town Code .

This page is general information, not a zoning determination. Slope categories and disturbance limits depend on the specific parcel, so confirm your lot's hillside classification with the Paradise Valley Planning Department before you rely on a number.