There are 46 vacant lots in historic downtown Fresno neighborhood. Here’s who owns what
When James and Michelle Moyer of San Jose bought their tiny empty lot – less than a tenth of an acre – in the heart of Fresno’s historic Chinatown district about six years ago, they were attracted by plans for a nearby passenger station for California’s future high-speed train project and impressed with what they see as the potential for Chinatown and downtown Fresno.
“Chinatown has been mostly empty for quite some time, the result of urban flight to the suburbs in previous decades,” James Moyer told The Fresno Bee via email. “But now people are discovering that the suburbs, malls and car culture are isolating, expensive and boring, so we’re returning to the urban village. We hope to be part of that in our own little way.”
Of almost 150 pieces of property in Chinatown, almost one-third – adding up to almost 8.5 acres – are undeveloped lots of nothing more than dirt, some vacant for years, even decades. Out-of-town owners like the Moyers own a handful of the empty lots, while most are controlled by local owners in Fresno and other cities in neighboring central San Joaquin Valley counties.
Whether local or out-of-town, those owners are waiting to see how – or if – planned city investments of more than $100 million in Chinatown infrastructure and the future high-speed rail station will bolster prospects for the sagging neighborhood.
It’s unclear how many owners may ultimately develop their empty lots rather than sell to get a return on their investment; either way, there’s a sense of anticipation over what specific plans by the city of Fresno and the California High-Speed Rail Authority will look like.
A historic area ‘left behind far too long’
Parts of Chinatown date to Fresno’s origins in the 1870s. What is now an 18-block area generally bounded by Fresno, G, and Ventura streets and Highway 99, is tucked between the state freeway and the Union Pacific Railroad freight tracks. The railroad separates Chinatown on the west from downtown Fresno to the east, and post a physical barrier that historically segregated the neighborhood as Fresno’s original “wrong side of the tracks.”
Chinatown became home to immigrants largely unwelcome in other parts of the fledgling city, including the Chinese laborers who built what was then the Central Pacific Railroad line and, later, ethnic groups including Japanese, Mexicans, Armenians and others who came to Fresno looking for work and opportunities. It became a notorious red-light district where vices frowned upon east of the railroad tracks – such as gambling, drinking, drugs and prostitution – could be satisfied. Remnants of that sordid past are evidenced by tunnels that course beneath parts of Chinatown.
Now, as the city wields almost $300 million in state infrastructure grants, the area that has been largely neglected for decades is poised for a historic investment in improvements that Mayor Jerry Dyer sees as integral to the revitalization of the broader downtown core. The mayor estimated that at least $100 million of that work will happen in Chinatown.
“We’re not going to lift up downtown without Chinatown,” Dyer said in late October. “Chinatown has been left behind far too long.”
But the city’s hope is that better streets, upgraded capacity for sewer and water lines, new park areas and other improvements will stimulate interest in developing long-vacant lots and prompt owners of aging, empty buildings to breathe new life into their properties.
Dr. Elipdio Fonte, a retired physician who used to have his medical practice in Chinatown and still owns several parcels of empty land near Tulare and E streets, is among the owners who want to develop their property but want to see more tangible progress by the city on plans for the neighborhood.
At one time, Fonte said he and his family partnership owned an entire block of Chinatown bounded by Tulare, Kern and E Streets and Highway 99. Over time, much of that property has been sold, but the family retains a few lots.
When he bought the properties in the mid-2000s, before high-speed rail plans began to ferment, “we were planning to put up some rentals in that area,” Fonte told The Bee in a phone interview. “”But Chinatown was not really getting better. I was waiting for it to get better.”
Fonte said that over his time in Chinatown, “there was a lot of talk, then it would go away, then there would be more talk, and it would go away again.” And the doctor, now 83, acknowledged that the neighborhood’s decades of inertia is “definitely frustrating.”
“We are waiting for the improvements in the area,” Fonte said. “If we build something … I cannot put up a structure that is not in harmony with the plans of the city.” But so far, he added, he has not heard from City Hall about what specific improvements are in store or how that may spur his interest.
“I’m waiting for what kind of architecture they will have so I can talk to my architect,” he said. “I want to be harmonious to the plan of the city and be on the same page for progress.”
Jan Minami, a project director with the Chinatown Fresno Foundation, said other property owners are taking a similar stance before moving forward with their own plans.
Who owns Chinatown?
Chinatown comprises 145 separate pieces of property, amounting to almost 44 acres of land after discounting space taken up by city roads and alleys. That doesn’t include land on the east side of G Street that has been acquired by the California High-Speed Rail Authority for its right of way and future passenger station between Chinatown and downtown.
About two-thirds of the parcels, and almost three-quarters of the acreage, are owned by individuals, companies, trusts or partnerships in Fresno County and neighboring Valley counties. Out-of-town owners control about 21% of the parcels that account for less than 16% of the acreage. Most of the rest is owned by government agencies, either the state of California or the city of Fresno and its former redevelopment agency, according to property databases.
The ownership breakdown includes:
Local owners (Fresno-Clovis): 91 parcels, 32.04 acres.
Out-of-town owners: 31 parcels, 6.75 acres.
State government (including the California High-Speed Rail Authority): 14 parcels, 1.95 acres.
Local government (City of Fresno, or its redevelopment agency): 5 parcels, 1.79 acres.
Utilities (PG&E and others): 4 parcels, 1.04 acres.
The largest single landowner in the district is California Dairies Inc., a Visalia-based dairy cooperative with a sprawling plant that produces butter, milk and milk powder. The company owns 14 separate parcels that add up to almost 11 acres largely bounded by E, F, Inyo and Ventura streets, at the southern end of Chinatown.
In addition to the 46 vacant dirt lots in Chinatown, another 13 parcels adding up to about 2.5 acres are paved but without any buildings, according to information provided by Minami and the Chinatown Fresno Foundation.
The Moyers bought their lot between F Street and China Alley south of Mariposa Street in 2017, “after viewing the proposed high-speed rail map and realizing that Fresno Station would be located steps away from this blank canvas of empty land right in the heart of the city,” James Moyer told The Bee via email.
“The lot’s proximity to the new high-speed rail station got our attention, then we explored Fresno a few times,” Michelle Moyer said. “We visited the Tower District and the Mural District, and had a few beers at Tioga-Sequoia (Brewing Co.).”
“We imagined how great it would be to live in a new transit-oriented, walkable neighborhood near the station and take a quick train to work in the Bay Area rather than making that long commute by car, as so many people are stuck doing currently,” she added.
Between the Chukchansi Park baseball stadium, downtown’s growing Brewery District, and Selland Arena and the rest of the Fresno Convention Center complex, “there is so much potential in Chinatown and all of central Fresno, really,” Michelle Moyer said.
James Moyer added that the city “has been great in building awareness of their plans.”
What’s the holdup on development?
For going on two years, two of the major streets providing access between Chinatown and the nearby downtown – Tulare Street and Ventura Street – have been torn up for high-speed rail construction, closed between H and G streets while contractors build new street underpasses to carry traffic beneath the existing Union Pacific Railroad freight tracks and the future bullet-train tracks. Several smaller streets that formerly crossed the UPRR tracks have been closed permanently.
The road work and closures have been a source of angst for Chinatown business owners, but the California High-Speed Rail Authority’s regional leaders expect to reopen both streets with the underpasses in 2024.
“It has taken a little longer than we anticipated” to finish the Tulare and Ventura underpasses, high-speed rail Central Valley regional director Garth Fernandez said earlier this year. “But on the schedule we have now, we should be completed with Tulare (Street) and opening it in the first quarter of 2024.”
“And then once we open Tulare, Ventura is going to reopen four to six months after that,” Fernandez added. “Then work will begin on the Fresno Street undercrossing.”
Given the uncertainty over the progress of the bullet-train project and related work, Dyer isn’t necessarily surprised that property owners are waiting before moving forward with any improvements.
“I think there was an expectation that high-speed rail would be done sooner, and that roads wouldn’t be closed for these prolonged periods of time,” Dyer told The Bee in an October interview. “To these people may not have anticipated owning this land this long.”
“I think the wait-and-see ownership (of both empty buildings and vacant lots in Chinatown and downtown) was based on when it was going to be profitable; the ‘land-banking’ happened based on unforeseen things,” Dyer added. “They wanted to seize the opportunity for a great deal, but not knowing how long it was going to take for that deal to be realized.”
The city has hired consultants to study the most strategic places for work on updating Chinatown’s aging infrastructure, including water and sewer lines, streets and more. That work in Chinatown and downtown is all aimed at making both districts more attractive to developers of multi-family housing to bring more residents into the areas – to a total of at least 10,000 residents.
Already, the Monarch, a four-story, 57-unit Fresno Housing Authorities complex of affordable apartments with about 4,700 square feet of commercial space on the ground floor, is open at Mariposa and F streets. Dyer also described the city’s hopes for developing 71 units of housing in the Bow On Tong Association building, partially destroyed by a 2022 fire, on the east side of F Street between Tulare and Kern streets, and another 84 apartments in the nearby Peacock Building on the west side of F Street.
Among other Chinatown plans include:
Additional street lighting on F Street between Fresno and Ventura streets with the installation of 14 LED streetlights.
Planting more than two dozen trees on F Street between Fresno and Mariposa streets to provide shade from Fresno’s triple-digit summer temperatures.
Repairing cracked and broken sidewalks on F Street between Fresno and Ventura streets.
Installing a permeable surface in China Alley between Kern and Inyo streets, in the historic heart of the district, that will allow rain water to pass into the soil instead of pooling atop the pavement.
The Fresno City Council voted unanimously on Dec. 7 to award a construction contract valued at almost $5.3 million for the streetlights, trees and China Alley reconstruction. That money is coming from the city’s share of the state’s Transformative Climate Communities program – a separate pot of money from the $297 million that’s been awarded to Fresno for the broader Chinatown/downtown infrastructure improvements.
