A decade after leveling historic buildings, developer aims to rebuild Paraiso Springs.

The city of Soledad is banking on the new status of Pinnacles National Park to generate tourism to the east. Now there are plans to upgrade another ancient geological gem 7 miles to the west.

Paraiso Hot Springs, once a popular spot for the Chumash tribe and then Franciscan missionaries, became a luxury resort around the turn of the 20th century. Sugar-beet king Claus Spreckels had a home there, and President James Buchanan reportedly visited the spot nicknamed the “Carlsbad of America” for its similarities to the famed German springs.

The springs have been shuttered for a decade, but a development proposal is calling for a new hotel and spa, vineyard and 77 timeshare units “centered on the European theme of wellness, treatment and education associated with the existing mineral hot springs,” according to a draft environmental impact report released by the county July 11.

The draft EIR is open for public comment until Sept. 6; land use and historic preservation groups are studying the proposal to prepare comments.

To mitigate tree-clearing, developer-owner Thompson Holdings LLC recommends preserving 150 acres of the 235-acre property as open space.

But there’s also the question of how to mitigate damage already done. In 2003, Thompson demolished 12 Victorian cottages – nine of them historic – without a permit. Dale Ellis, a consultant for Thompson Holdings attorney Lombardo & Associates, says in the decade since the demolition, Thompson has been conducting technical studies and waiting out the down economy.

The draft EIR calls for the creation of a color brochure, a historic exhibit in the lobby and a $10,000 grant to the Monterey County Historical Society.

Mike Dawson, president of the Alliance of Monterey Area Preservationists (AMAP), is unimpressed by the proposed mitigation. “Holy shit, $1 million would be more like it,” he says.

He’d like to see Los Coches Adobe, the old train station where visitors used to meet the stagecoach for a ride to the springs, restored as part of the Paraiso plan. “It could be an anchor on one end of the wine corridor,” he says.

Ken Hinshaw used to frequent the springs and was on the AMAP board when the Thompsons leveled the cottages. He became AMAP’s de facto expert, gathering historic documents and photographs he files in a milk carton.

He remembers Paraiso’s late years, when it was an getaway for Peninsula-dwellers – “an annex of P.G.” – drawn to the healing powers of sun and 117-degree waters, and he’d like to see it reopen.

“It was a relaxing, eccentric place to go,” he says.

John Thompson of Horsham, Penn.-based Thompson Holdings referred all questions to Lombardo. He would not disclose the names of partners in the company.