Helping Downtown
Submitted by jpatrick on Sun, 06/04/2006 - 21:37.
This blog was posted as a comment and managed to get distracted, hit the back button and lost the entire comment. So, naturally I forgot what I'd said. The original author was Redhotliz, and the intent was to put this as a comment. For whatever reason of my lack of computer skills I got an error message and don't want to just trash this comment.
For Downtown to come out of its blight, big money has to come to Fresno and lots of the area gets cleaned up at the same time.
I moved into an office Downtown and I have to agree with the comment "it feels like I'm in Mexico". Dirty and scummy in what is nothing less than an open-air art museum. The only reason that transient crowd is there is that the Fulton Mall is a very beautiful area and that transient population have enough sense to see that it is a nice place. If they weren't there the Downtown would be completely empty. Do they appreciate Fresno's own original Renoir or some of the other wonderful art pieces? These people come from a culture of having dirt floors to struggle for $5 per day for an income.
Those yellow cart wagons that blight the Mall reportedly pay less than $300 per month as opposed to the business that have to pay $3,000 per month rent for retail space of the buildings. This is completely unfair to the businesses. How about taxes of the businesses that the carts do? The people don't even speak English, somehow I am not assured of the honesty that those cart people account for sales taxes in an all cash business. So it goes with the garage sale industry. Plus they have just about ruined the concrete sidewalk where their carts sit. I paid a small fortune in taxes last year, why is it that the illegal aliens, or non-documented immigrants, break the laws and are catered to in an effort to welcome illegal or unethical business practices, when the City does not cater to other more law abiding folks that follow the standards? It doesn't make sense.
How about if the gal that owned Centaur Books gets a little trailer and sells books for cash out of a little trailer every day on the Mall? Oh, and Long's Drugs could get dozens of little trailers and not have to pay that expensive overhead. Uh oh, don't give this stupid idea serious credit there is at least one council member that would like to open the Mall to cars; why not just make it a trailer city where swap meets are king. Since the big box stores won't open regular market stores maybe Macy's can have custom made trailers and paint them pink, just to be different. Well, Bass Pro could just sell stuff out of their aluminum fishing boats on trailers, why build a store? We don't want this to be too creative though.
Was there a point to make of all of this rambling? Yes the original post had mentioned the fact that Downtown needs help. The organic component; the original vitality that made Downtown work, to make it the 4th largest city in California in the 1920's with a population of over 100,000 people, was its streetcar system and the ease of mobility. You could go where ever you needed to go just by jumping on a trolley car.
Where is this needed mobility component now? I ask, yet wouldn't ask without having an answer. Stay tuned or send me an email for more details.
Re: Marcus Pollasky
He conviced a lot of people to give him a lot of money to invest in his railroad, built a few miles of it (down what is today Clovis Avenue) and then skipped town with the rest of the money.
Pollasky
I've only been able to read about a page of history about him and I don't remember that much; could you expand?
Marcus Pollasky is another story entirely. He is responsible for the scam that was the San Joaquin Valley Railroad, and skipped town before the turn of the 20th century. Don't think he had anything to do with the Fresno streetcars.
When Fresno Rode the Rails
I tried to purchase that book a couple of months ago got sidetracked an forgot about it. I have that picture in my power point presentation.
Interesting thing about the Fresno Traction Company and/or Fresno Railway Company, it was owned by Mr. Pollasky (main street Clovis). There was some interesting speculations about that guy and his dealings with a Mr. Huntington from LA in relation to the building of the power plants around Huntington Lake.
Little known facts
The Fresno Traction Company/Fresno Railway Company was actually a private business! And the tracks ran all the way to the San Joaquin River (so Fresno growing to the north should not be a surprise). Also, from the time it opened till the time it closed up shop in the late 1930's it only turned a profit once. For more information, look up the book "When Fresno Rode the Rails"
Fresno City Railway Co.
I couldn't agree with you more, but be warned. There's a bunch of folks out there who will jump on your comments and give you hell for any mention of the homeless, bums and creeps who hang out downtown. They'll tell you how sophisticated they are - that they've managed to live in Washington DC and San Francisco and the suits all manage to get along with city scum there, so Fresno should be no different. I thought this could be an open forum for expressing views, but I observed a newbie blogger get run over the coals for expressing views on the homeless in downtown, and looks like she hasn't been back.
I applaud you. Your comments are real and true. Unfortunately, we have many in our society who will defend the cart pushers as just trying to make an honest buck. And why should they learn English when we are required to provide any document they need in their language, and we are required to have federal, state and local employees in each agency who can communicate with them. It wouldn't help if they paid taxes, either, because they would still be draining our system with all of the public assistance and health care they get.
It is like Tijuana, except we don't have the nearly dead horses, barely alive, being beaten by big fat men with toothpicks in their mouth, offering rides in a dilapidated carriage.
Like it or not, it is what it is - this writer speaks the truth. As much as we want to say we have a "diversified culture", this isn't 'culture'. It's 'trailer trash' from another country.
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