NEXT GEN 29: Paul Razo
The PAAC Chair advocates for a city as beautiful as the desert that surrounds it
How does one mark the generational change in a community?
For many years, Twentynine Palms has been governed by a mix of an “old boys club” consisting of descendants of the City’s founders and early residents and Marines who fell in love with the town in which they were stationed and stayed. But within the last year a shift has taken place as evidenced on the City bodies in which members are appointed by City Council. We thought our readers might want to meet this next generation of leadership so we’ll be publishing profiles of them over the next several weeks under the heading Next Gen 29: Planning Commission Chair Jessica Cure, PAAC Chair Paul Razo and Vice Chair Sara Lyons; and TBID Vice Chair Ashton Ramsey. Our profile of Planning Commission Vice Chair Alex Garcia was published on November 16.
Change is here.
Public Art Advisory Committee (PAAC) Chair Paul Razo first visited Twentynine Palms in 2016, seeking great stargazing. Having found it, Razo and his partner Heather Basile fell in love with 29 and purchased a fixer upper in 2018. They started making connections with old timers and other community members as they sorted through castoffs to decorate their new home.
In 2020 Heather opened Mojave Moon Apothecary, now a nationally recognized brand with a store at Historic Plaza, while Paul built his graphic design business, Ozar Studio. Razo is responsible for the popular logo for local pizza pop-up I Fall to Pizzas and more recently for the 29 Palms Music Series Committee's successful social media campaign to win a Levitt Foundation grant. Working with Tourism Business Improvement District (TBID) Vice Chair Ashton Ramsey and Marketing Director Breanne Dusastre, he and Heather designed the first Los Angeles-based billboard promoting Twentynine Palms. Along with Basile and co-owners of Sun in the Desert, Jimmy Brower and Damian Merino, Razo is the co-founder of the 501c3 nonprofit Friends of the Historic Plaza dedicated to the revitalization of the Historic Plaza. Razo and the nonprofit group have been instrumental in developing events such as the annual Classic Car and Motorcycle Show and this summer’s Backyard BBQ Party.
Razo has been an vocal advocate for constraints on commercial development in residential zoning due to his experiences in his hometown of Bloomington, an unincorporated community in the Inland Empire. His grandfather located the family there in 1973 after returning from service in the Vietnam War. His grandmother was a Cahuilla Native from the Morongo reservation, and Razo credits the textiles and colors of Native markets and powwows as inspiration for his Red Raven Trading Co. business.
When he was a child Bloomington was very rural and Razo remembers his grandfather taking him to the forest behind their neighborhood to shoot BB guns. The town’s proximity to the 10 freeway caught the attention of truckers, who parked their rigs in the plentiful open space. As businesses such as Amazon sought warehouses and fulfillment centers, the town changed, eventually seeing the destruction of 177 homes to make way for warehouses. As Razo said speaking in the Desert Trumpet Envisioning the Future of Twentynine Palms town hall in June 2024:
Why did I bring this up in terms of the desert? Because whether it’s a resort, hotel or warehouse, a big gray wall 30 feet from your back door is big gray wall. So we have to look at how we approach development. But we also have to look at how we’re going to do it with solutions in mind. Because we do need extra jobs, we do need an economy, because we do need to become a self-sustaining city.
Does that rely entirely on tourism? Maybe not. I mean, I love spending my tourist money just as much as anybody else, but we need to find better solutions. We need to find ways to boost sectors, retail sectors, all the empty buildings around town….
In 2013 Paul moved from Bloomington to Los Angeles and studied Graphic and Web Design at the Art Institutes of California in Santa Monica. After graduating, he took a student store position at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena where being able to pick the brains of the students and prolific faculty was a daily inspiration.
The student store at Art Center also had its own Apple Store and he went on to become the Team Lead, Apple Technician, eventual Manager of that department. The combined experience of working in higher education and with Apple led Razo to a position at Barnes & Noble Education. After three months, the company’s Chief Product Officer caught him designing for a freelance job during lunch and asked if he wanted to become a User Experience Designer:
I learned how to work as an integral part of a team that spanned two countries and three time zones, I learned how to pitch ideas to stakeholders making five times the salary I was, and I learned how to defend ideas that I felt were in the best interest of users. I immersed myself in information architecture, product management, and journey mapping. I learned how to sniff out pain points and design solutions before they were even needed. I learned how to scale a product while adhering to and maintaining a cohesive design system. It was trial by fire with catered lunches.
Razo has also been an active advocate for intentional design in city planning and for an arts master plan including maintenance and preservation of existing artwork in the city, speaking at the both the April 4 and April 5 Strategic Planning sessions:
When these murals begin to fade, when they begin to crack, they tell a very different story to members of the community and to visitors. It is not of a city that’s on the upswing. It is a city that is crumbling simply just based off of that visual cue. We need to repair art. We need to bring more art. And I hope you understand that. A huge shout out to the Tourism Board and everything that they’re doing to draw attention to this community. I think as far as beautification for the City goes, I wish the City would be (inaudible) coming down with a color palette that we would agree goes with this wilderness of the desert…
In 2024 Razo ran against April Ramirez and Planning Commissioner Jim Krushat for the District 2 City Council seat. Ramirez won. Commenting on what he learned, Razo said:
I learned that, while I believe we all want what’s best for this community and this desert, there is a paralyzing amount of contention in this city. Even when the goals are mutual, we can’t seem to help stepping on each other’s toes. If we want to move forward, true collaboration will be our biggest hurdle to clear.
Paul responded to our questions via email.
What prompted you to apply to sit on the PAAC and then move into a leadership position?
Honestly, I was a big fan of Anna Stump and Kate Lee Short, the former Chair and Co-Chair of the PAAC. They had a lot of passion for what the PAAC was doing, and rightfully so, but they made it clear that help was needed. When they proposed that I should apply, I couldn’t turn down the opportunity to work with them.
What do you see as the role of the PAAC?
Per the PAAC’s mission statement:
To enrich the public environment for both residents and visitors
To nurture, enhance, and encourage the community’s participation in arts
To enable Twentynine Palms to enhance its identity as an arts community
To increase public access to promote an understanding and awareness of the arts
I think this sums it up perfectly.
What do you hope to achieve through being a Chair or Vice Chair?
It sounds somewhat superficial, but my biggest drivers are aesthetics and functional design. Art plays a great function in any city. Not just commercially, or visually, but in the mental health of every constituent. When you live in a beautiful city, a city curated and designed with intention, you feel better.
One project I’m looking forward to on the PAAC is developing a style guide for the City. Cataloging our existing design assets and seeing where we can connect dots to make things more cohesive. I truly see us as an arts destination, but it’s like we brought in the artwork before building the gallery. As a city we need to create a context where our art shines. We have a great Strategic Planning Subcommittee that’s working on what that may look like long term.
Another initiative I’d like to drive into 2026 is a city map and directory to be erected at Freedom Plaza. We’re a small city, but we have tons of unique businesses, amenities, and experiences to offer, not to mention our mural map. We need to find every way to put these things front and center—not just for visitors, but locals too!
Setting aside your Commission or Committee role, what’s your long-term vision for 29 Palms?
I want this city to be as beautiful as the desert that surrounds it. I want more art. I want beautiful storefronts full of successful businesses. I want locals who are proud to live here and happy to live here.
We have such an amazing and close-knit community. I want them to live in a city that reflects how great they are.
Again, setting aside your Commission or Committee role, what steps are you taking to realize that vision?
Friends of the Historic Plaza recently hosted our second annual Classic Car & Motorcycle show in collaboration with the City and their Pioneer Days programming. We’ve also hosted a Holiday Market, a Chalkfest, and a Backyard BBQ party at the Historic Plaza with grant funding from the City. These have been truly humbling and inspiring events. They’ve brought out droves of locals every time. We get our old-timers telling great stories about past events at the Historic Plaza, and we get a new generation of 29ers making memories there for the very first time.
Looking forward to 2026 we’d like to work on a couple of beautification projects for the plaza and more collaborative marketing efforts to promote the businesses that make the plaza such a special place.
Recently, I also headed up social media efforts for the 29 Palms Music Series Committee. In just under a month we were able to accrue 800+ Instagram followers and finish 12th in a nationwide voting competition for grant funding to bring to 30 concerts to the Freedom Plaza Stage.1
There are factions within the 29 Palms community, especially the accommodations and business community, who feel their needs and businesses are not receiving the attention they deserve. How do you feel the City can better work toward unifying those factions and ensuring that all businesses feel supported?
I want to preface this as a business owner and say, the City can only do so much. A lot of businesses in all sectors would benefit from revisiting their branding, marketing, and media strategies if they truly want to drive their efforts.
Now, what the City can do is put a greater focus on wayfinding. If you explore the City on Saturdays and stop by the Farmer’s Market you see a ton of people out there, and with the JTNP Visitors Center right there you also see a lot of tourists. However, if you leave the Farmer’s Market and visit a few local businesses you’ll see a huge drop off in foot traffic.
The consumers are here, so why aren’t they exploring what we have? It’s because we as a city have failed to incentivize and entice them to explore. We’ve made broad strides toward increasing tourism, but haven’t put in place the means to capitalize on those efforts. We need to reanalyze our design strategies and ask ourselves, “What can we do to take the wheel and guide people around our city?”
Our local business association, Rediscover 29, made a great step in this direction with the City map they recently released that highlights their member businesses.
Name one thing residents can do to work toward change in their community?
Support each other and this city. If you see a gap in what’s happening, fill it—don’t just complain about it. From the first Natives, to the homesteaders, to today one thing has always remained true: you can’t survive the desert alone. It takes a community and it takes people stepping up.
What have you learned about yourself through serving on a city body and being in a leadership position?
I learned that I love this city far more than I ever expected I would.
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Twentynine Palms was announced as one of the winners of the grant after this interview as completed.