Fresno Famous

During a tour of the Downtown Fulton Mall area with my Fresno State Entrepreneur 161: Urban Entrepreneurship class; instructed by Mr. Craig Scharton, I discovered a painfully obvious fact about the Downtown Fresno area; it's dead.  Now, when I say "dead", I'm referring to the spirit of the Downtown Fresno area, when it comes to most "big city" downtown areas; big city meaning more than 1 million people, including neighboring counties, their vibrant, their festive, there's something to do around every corner you turn.  They have everything from million dollar nightclubs to prestigious award winning colleges and universities.

While analyzing the social construct of Fresno's downtown area, I realized a huge problem, there's a huge culture barrier that prevents growth in the Downtown Fresno area, specifically the Fulton Mall, when you look at most successful business environments in Fresno, CA they have the perfect mash-up/blend of culture for that given environment, when you look at downtown’s 1000 block of Fulton Mall, the cultural balance is thrown so far off, that it discourages patrons and other businesses from venturing  out that way.

I don't believe there is an imminent solution to this problem, but I will suggest that the City of Fresno, CA, take a lesson from the City of San Diego, CA.  In the 1980's, the Downtown San Diego area was about as dead as the Downtown Fresno area.  The La Jolla Village was the place to be in San Diego; the City of San Diego took notice and constructed a huge syndication/renovation of the Downtown San Diego area, thus giving the area new life through the Gaslamp Quarter.  In saying all of this, Downtown Fresno is no Downtown San Diego, but the City of Fresno needs to take notice and set the benchmark.

Documents & Files

Files: 

The Fulton Faux Pas