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The more things change ...
- Aug 19 2009
- 12
By show of hands, who likes the Fulton Mall?
OK, everyone “likes” the Fulton Mall, right? Otherwise there wouldn't be any debate over opening it to traffic, or cleaning the broken sidewalks and fountains. If people didn't at least “like” the mall, there wouldn't be any talk about building facades or sound ordinances or free parking.
But that passion seems to exist well beyond its use.
For example: Old ladies who haven't been downtown in 20 years, eagerly throw out theories on what's wrong with the mall. Mayors talk about the need for its revitalization and still it just sits.
It's been a bad month for those of us who really like the Fulton Mall. Milano is closing. The Parsley Cafe is for sale and there are rumors about the Smokehouse, which isn't on the mall proper, but shares its affects.
This comes after a Creative Fresno Blender at the Lofts at 1060, which left me skeptical, but impressed. It follows the on-line chatter over the 1960s documentary “Fresno: A City Reborn,” which caught the attention of many a downtownphile for its massive amount of irony.
Then I read Peter H. King's “The Dream Unravels.” The article, which published in the Los Angeles Times in 1988 is great history of the mall and you should read it now.
It's OK, I'll wait.
Twenty years old, and this story reads like it was written yesterday, that's how little has changed on the mall. It's sad, and I wonder what it must be like for those without my youthful exuberance, those who watched the mall being built, then watched it crumble, and crumble and get left for dead.
The interweaving story lines — Fresno's history of sprawl, its relationship with developers, its seemingly unconditional love of all things shiny and new — make it tough to focus on any one thing long enough to find an answer, but I wonder: Of all the people who “like” the mall, doesn't anyone really care?
I say this realizing the Fulton Mall operates quite well as it is.
When people say “there's nothing on the mall,” what they mean to say is, there's nothing for them on the mall. When they say no one goes to the mall, it's obvious they weren't there on a Saturday afternoon.
Or they just can't see the color brown.
I like the Fulton Mall as is — broken sidewalks and overgrown trees, the swap mall and street preachers and the guy who stands by the clock tower lifting weights and listening to Michael Jackson.
But I also see the potential and it excites me.
There's been movement, sure. There are people living close by now, and more all the time. I'm one of them. This year the mall hosted the HyeFest and the Rev Fest and Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson (and John Cougar if you want to include him). A certified farmers market popped up.
But it's an uphill climb and there's always the chance we'll slip and fall back. That stadium Dylan played at doesn't pay for itself. And I remember Fulton Plaza Thursdays. And Milano.
So, I've put aside Peter King's story, figure I'll pull it out and re-read it in another 20 years and see where we are. You should too. Just as a reminder.
Here's hoping it reads like history next time.
12 Comment(s) for "The more things change ..."
i like that people get bounced off the site (antimusic, is this you?) and keep coming back to whine about how they loved the site five years ago. let it go, jarah et al sold the site a long time ago. no one is forcing you to come to this website.
jtehee@fresnobee.com
...For it next time I'm down at the library. I like FF.
Seems so hopeless of a situation, but still I am optimistic! "Fresno's history of sprawl, its relationship with developers, its seemingly unconditional love of all things shiny and new" says it all. I enjoy reading your writing Mr. Tehee.
Extemely interesting articles and thread. I am thinking housing and residents are our best shot at a successful downtown - and not that "all things shiny and new" downtown. SF's try may work because its people's committment is so much more established.
hmm? seems like Fresno was ahead of its time, but couldn't make it work;
CNNMoney.com
Putting a price on walkability
Posted by David Futrelle
August 22, 2009 11:13 pm
How much is walkability worth? An intriguing new study suggests that people are willing to pay considerable premiums for houses in neighborhoods that are highly walkable — that is, where you can actually get to nearby stores, schools, and parks without having to hop in the car.
The study, conducted by a group called CEOs for Cities, looked at 90,000 homes in 15 different markets in the US, mashing up home sales data with “walkability” scores from WalkScore.com. (See the press release describing the study here, or download the study itself, in pdf form, here.) In 13 of the 15 areas studied, homes in highly walkable neighborhoods sold on average for $4000 to $34,000 more than homes in neighborhoods of average walkability. The pattern held in locations as diverse as Chicago, Tucson, and Jacksonville, Florida; only in Las Vegas were more-walkable neighborhoods less desirable than less-walkable ones. To the author of the study, Joseph Cortright, this suggests that neighborhood walkability is “more than just a pleasant amenity,” and deserves far more attention from politicians and other urban leaders./blockquote>
http://moneyfeatures.blogs.money.cnn.com/2009/08/22/putting-a-price-on-w...
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welcome to the future
WOW!!!, stop the presses, its a big deal from the: "San Francisco Chronicle"
Castro district tries out a pedestrian plaza
Rachel Gordon, Chronicle Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
City work crews hustled Monday to transform a small stretch of 17th Street in San Francisco's Castro neighborhood into a car-free pedestrian plaza, an experiment that could be replicated in neighborhoods across the city if the public buys into the idea.
The 17th Street project is the first of the city's "pavement-to-parks program" in which the traditional use of streets to carry cars is being rethought. Initially, the closure will be temporary but could be made permanent.
"The test of success will be whether the neighborhood accepts it," said David Alumbaugh, San Francisco's acting director of citywide planning.
The new plaza will be about half a block long - located on the west end of 17th Street between Castro and Market streets. A gas station runs along one side of the plaza and neighborhood-serving businesses on the other. The Municipal Railway's historic F-line trolleys run along tracks in the middle of the street, and will continue to do so.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2009/05/12/BARL17IHQ...
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welcome to the future
Put a few thousand residents on the Fulton Mall in the old buildings and you'll have a scene there growing organically from the people themselves.
I find it amazing that the much of new housing being built in Fresno appears to be downtown. It IS happening just slower than I'd like. Let's keep housing growth downtown and add living space in the old buildings.
Why settle for the fake Disneyland like "Cityscape" of Riverpark when we can create a real "Cityscape" with real big buildings and real population density.
Yes, my hand is raised too.
I think that the South end of the mall (the block that's around the Chuck) should be focused on for nightlife/shopping stuff (or stuff for whitey) and then leave the rest of the mall the way it is (other than some basic improvements, facades, whatever) and let it be what it be.
Great read, Famous.
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www.thefresnan.com
Hello Fresnoise,
Joe Moore told me that the film (if that waa what you were referring to) is available through the Fresno library system.
Ok, I'm back to reading the article (it's a long 'un).
Both my hands are raised!!!
I firmly believe that with the right investors, the Fulton Mall can not only thrive but see successful business's co-exist with the loveable locals who really mean no harm as long as you mind your own business and let them go about theirs.
Joe Moore sent me an article that ran in the Fresno Bee in 1972. In it a architectural critic, urban historian and community consultant predicts that Fresno will become...well, what it has become. It's another good read.
Wednesday, Jan. 19, 1972 THE FRESNO BEE - Page D1
A Not-Too-Bright Picture of Fresno
Fresno's downtown development may have made the city no more than just another pretty face.
"The pictorial development apparently had the hope in mind that when the prettiness was achieved that all of the other problems would go away, which has not been the case at all,"said Allan Temko, San Francisco Chronicle architectural critic, urban historian, community consultant and University of California instructor who was in Fresno today to lecture at San Joaquin Valley Town Hall in Convention Center Theater.
Temko, who testified at hearings in Fresno during the planning phase of downtown development, said that while the city is to be complimented on the beauty of its achievements, ("Fresno is very kindly toward the arts"), the underlying forces and problems besetting the city and its peoples have, not been solved.
"I think Fresno faces a very real danger of becoming an old people's town, and I mean old people in the literal sense, unless there is social and political change to bring about solutions which will keep the young people and the gifted people in the community."
He referred to the city's unemployment rate as a long-range danger signal.
"Is this part of the permanent picture for Fresno?" he asked. "Are Fresno and other cities of the valley in a downward unemployment trend? While Fresno is getting about one new industry a month, for the most part the people are taking in each other's washing. The city's political and economic leaders have not been energetic in figuring and planning the city's economic future."
He said Fresno has not faced up to rapid technological changes in agriculture and agribusiness.
"The time must come you know, when we must stop kicking the brown people around," he said. "Perhaps they were even better off in the old baronial period, at least they knew who they were working for then. Today the policies of employment and conditions hinge on a board of directors meeting far off somewhere—in Texas for instance."
Temko was bitterly critical of "developers who own property on the edge of-the peripheral and are raising hell with the city's center."
Instead of protecting the downtown core, he said such developments as "Fashion Fair" were permitted to "dilute" it.
The city's downtown investment, economically and social, must be protected, he said. There has been too much dilution of its resources. Part of the problem has been impatience in trying to make it a Chamber brochure.
"The only way to protect and revitalize downtown," he said, "is to stop northward expansion. There is no reason to put the new freeways where the developers want them, taking out middle class homes as they go. Are we planning a city for cars or people?"
"While downtown Fresno should be a viable, lively and healthy place for young people, at night it is totally dead. I was thinking last night how fine it would be to take a building like the Santa Fe depot and turn it into a place where young people can make some noise. The young people should be a part of downtown like in the days when they cruised the drag and sat in the malt shop. There is more to life than the back seat of a Buick."
Temko also took a shot at the new courthouse building.
"While Fresno has done some very good things, we should not knock it, but then I think about the old courthouse building being torn down to be replaced by an Arizona-looking pseudo public building," he said.
On the optimistic side, Temko said Fresno is still of a manageable size and has a good deal to be utilized in revitalizing it and making it into the kind of community in which the young and the gifted will want to live.
"Fresno needs to give more planning to its freeway, sewer and subdivision expansion," he said. "It needs to bring such things as the art center downtown, where they belong. I think the people have got to start demanding from political candidates and organizations, specific information on environmental attitudes. I think man must now consciously begin controlling his surroundings through politics, because man is a political animal."
By W.L.
too bad it's not on Netflix. I would take a look if it were.