I use to work down town and i dont remember it being as bad as orangebear states. Maybe I must be in the wrong city. Granted downtown is not the most beautiful place, but when I worked down there I appreciated walking along the fulton mall and the scenery. It is nice to see tall buildings and people not just cars and pavement like other business parks around town.

I work downtown, I sometimes shop downtown, and I attend Grizzlies games too.

I think you're overstating it more than a bit OrangeBear.

I've spent my share of time on Fulton Mall. Been panhandled once or twice. Nowhere near as bad as you say, at any time of day.

I haven't seen the mall as a place overflowing with gangbangers. In fact, Manchester Mall's a LOT worse in that regard. And I love Manchester too.

Are the buildings in decay? Yes. Is it a far cry from what it once was or could be? Absolutely. But I've seen no problem with a lack of police presence at the mall, at Grizzlies games, after Grizzlies games...none of it. They're there, though I've never needed them, and I don't feel the least bit unsafe.

Yes there are a large number of poor people downtown. I don't think its productive or nice to call them hood rats or assume they're gang members. You don't know their lot in life and neither do I. But they have just as much right to be there as you or I do.

Coney Island is how I remember it as a child, in fact the cook's even the same old guy that's been there forever.

I understand the anger but not necessarily the motivation for overstating it.

That's so weird. I work in downtown and have never seen any of this. It must all come out when I go home.

Sorry to burst you bubble MAD.
The beautiful Fulton Mall of the 60's you refer to is gone.
All the major department stores are gone.
Penny's is a wrecked shell.
My mom use to take us there to get the good fancy candy.
Woolworth and Newberry's are gone.
No kicking back at the soda fountain anymore.
Ted's 5 and 10 is gone.
No shopping for unique and wonderous items.
Gottchalk's and Newberry's have become ghetto swap malls.
Dental Grills, gangsta clothes, tennis shoes, tons of fake gold jewerly, nasty tacos and a gypsy fortune teller.
But yiou can get pirated CDs and all the fake Louie and Gucci your heart desires.
Everyone know Madame Donatella Versace would never allow her clothes to be sold at Thres Hermano's.
Even she is not that tacky!
City Hall realized they commited a major screwup by allowing the swapmalls to open.
It's all cash businesses.
The City loses thousands of dollars a day in taxes.
So they wont let more swapmalls open.
There is even a convienece(liquor) store on the mall.
Need to keep the "street people" drunk.
You can not walk from Inyo Street where the Old Gottchalk's was to Longs Drug's at Tuolumne Street without some "street person" pestering you for money on every block.
They don't need money for food.
The Poverello and Mission feed three times a day.
Even the food at the legendary Coney Island is nasty.
My granpa use to take us there for chilidogs and chocolate milk.
Now they boil the hot dogs instead or frying them.
Hotdogs should not be pink or almost white.
After being served that garbage they call food I refuse to go back in there.
Most of the mall water fountains have been filled with dirt and made into flower planters.
The few that have water are not kept clean or properly repaired.
Courthouse Park looks like a New Orleans refugee camp.
Drunk and drugged up street people sleeping on the lawn and on the benchs.
32s and 24s on the lawn.
Cardboard boxes and sleeping bags spread out.
What happen to laws against being intoxicated in public and no loitering?
Street people pester bus riders for money.
Bulldog gangbangers deal drugs in the park.
The fat bullmutt Peter with the shaved head and tatoo's on his face and head is there most afternoons.
The old white retard with grey hair Ed Skalarz plays drug courier most days too at the Fresno FAX bus shelters
He is not really retaded its an act.
The once beautiful Anna Woodward Memorial Foutain built in 1921 is dry and has had most of its metal fixtures stripped/stolen by the street people to recycle for beer and drugs.
They even steal the pieces of metal off the old Post Offce /School District building.
All the beautiful counter light fixtures in the lobby are long gone.
Fresno County Security does such a great job.
Even at the new building (TheTower) by the Convention Center where Caltrans and the IRS is has cars regularly broken into.
It is suppose to be secure and gated but little bullmutts hop the wall and open the door for their fellow mutts.
They repainted and remodled the Saroyan Theather.
The fancy walk way infront is already cracked up and its only been a few months.
How much did it cost?
Last season you had all your do gooders that buy tons of baseball tickets passing them out to the street people.
So you had drunk and drugged up, beer and piss stained street people roaming the baseball games.
You have Thirsty Thursday where beer is a dollar a cup.
So you get all the bullmutt ganbangers getting drunk.
What happen to Chief Dyer's program Operation Bullmutt?
Fresno Police stand around doing nothing and Stadium Security is worse then normal rent-a-pigs.
What are a bunch of obese people going to do when there is a fight?
Sit on them until Police Officer Fife finally decides to do something.
"Please Andy, Let me put my one bullet in my gun."
Soon as the games end Fresno PD disapear.
Yes baseball downtown is a great place to take your family.
Eveyone was pissed that time Mayor Paterson vetoed the stadium and they tried to portray him as bad.
They were so petty they didnt even put his name on the dedication plaque.
He said he vetoed it because a Mayor is suppose to protect taxpayer money.
A few years later what was on the front page of the Fresno Bee?
Taxpayers stuck with the cost of stadium.
That stadium has never made money from opening day.
Mr. Paterson was RIGHT!
How many of them were man enough to apologize to Mr Paterson?
The City keeps wanting to build a hotel downtown.
Which is stupid.
Mayor Bubba and the Council can't even run the city.
How are they going to run a hotel?
They can ruin it!
The Hilton could not make it downtown.
The Raddison has become a faded ghost of the original Centre Plaza.
The Del Webb folded and became the County Office Plaza.
Speaking of the Del Webb, other citys put fancy bars and fine restaurants at the top.
Top of the Mark, Widows on the World, ect...
In Fresno they put the restaurant of the Del Webb underground.
Typical backward Fresno mentality.
Yes the glory days of Downtown are gone.
The only decent place left to eat downtown is Tommy's Hamburgers.
But then you have to put up with all the loud mouth ghetto hoodrats that don't have enough sense or manners to shut up.
Even the pillar of civillization Starbuck's on Kern is geeting the street people and ghetto "Belmont" hookers in there.

Orange Bear,
Woow! What a downer...I was born in Fresno in 1923, attended Roosvelt High School and Fresno State. Haven't been back to Fresno since I guess the 50's or so! I had no idea that all this has happened to the downtown that I used to know so many years ago. I am writing a book, and when I described the Fresno I knew, everyone wants to move there after they read my description! My goodness! I guess I am way off and what a shame! The last I heard of Fresno was when they turned Fulton Street into a beautiful mall (and that alone was a shock!)and according to your info, that is no longer very nice!
Interesting information however, but I enjoyed your blurb and information.
MAD

Trouble is there is nothing downtown. No good stores, no food, and no movies. After 5 PM they lock the doors and roll up the sidewalks. Its not safe downtown. Baseball game isn't even over and the dam "street people" are already circling the stadium to pester peopple for beer and drug money. When I say "street people" I don't mean homeless. i mean people that choose to be on the street. The druggies and drunks that get fat checks and blow them. City needs to stop enabling them.Alot of them live at the Californian Hotel so they have apartment to stay in.You can't even go to Subway or to Starbuck's on Kern without being pestered by them. You have that crazy old Mike with nasty porno pictures taped on jis bike bothering woman. He sits in Starbuck's telling women he is looking for a wife. He gets cups of water and sits there pouring water down his shirt. I thought the Mission had showers? Where do you park downtown? Underground so you get robbed or stabbed? Why are the "street people" allowed in the parking garages? They don't have a car and have no business in there.
They need to put a bridge over Tulare Street and Fresno Street for cars. Then gate off the sides and gate off the alleys. No "Street people" allowed in. No shopping carts allowed in. No strollers or wheel chairs loaded with junk allowed in. And if you don't have a pass showing you parked in parking garage take them to police staiton and run a check om them. Restore the mall to its original opening beauty with grass and fountains. Make it safe again. Save the major historic buildings. but all the short junky ones bring them down.
Replace them with new buildings done in the old stlyes of historic Fresno. Do the same with Chinatown. Flaten the junk buildings and build new ones in Chinese style to match historic buildings. Put apartments on top floors of buildings and create a real China Town like other citys have.

I respect history. It's a lovely thing, and it's good to know.

But the future is more important, ultimately.

Those buildings which make good use of space, and can be fixed up to serve a useful, profitable function again? Keep them, obviously.

But things which are being kept SOLELY for their historical value, but which are basically just gathering dust, need to be seen as expendable.

Like Fulton Mall, for example.

Of course, you have to make sure that what replaces such things are of lasting value and good use of space and infrastructure. I'm the last to advocate tearing down old high rises just to plop down a Costco.

The dilemma that faces Downtown has been studied and addressed; the fundamental problem is its mobility issue. By continuing to address additional symptoms and tribulations is like going to the doctor with a knife stuck in your arm talking about all of the places you feel the pain. Having a doctor give you pain medication without taking out the knife in your arm does not solve the cause of the pain.

Saying that Downtown needs residential is an obvious conclusion. Saying that the Fulton Mall needs customer foot traffic as brilliant as saying a human needs air to breath.

Fresno continues to lead the nation with its pockets of economic desolation because there is no concentration of regional commerce. Where do the poor go to find work? How many miles do they have to drive to find employment and how do they get there? It becomes very easy for the poor to have the government to mail them a check.

Downtown's buildings were erected in the early teens and 1920s, they supported residential dwellings and accommodated worldwide relationships in business. Why is it that these buildings need to be razed? Do these buildings need to be destroyed because they are filled with beautiful marble floors and lined with irreplaceable wood coverings? Adaptation and remodeling office interiors is the most efficient, cost effective and normal procedure. To destroy Fresno's prosperous history displays short sightedness and is symptomatic of the plague that crowds the thought process of bureaucracy.

Fresno's paralysis of inaction is rather symptomatic of its residents. Change is efficacious when work is applied and its action creates change.

What you're describing is a city paralyzed by inaction. A city that grew complacent with double-digit unemployment and some of the highest concentrations of urban poverty in the nation. An education system in shambles. Air that's among the dirtiest in the nation. For the longest time, most people in Fresno didn't care. Maybe most people still don't, but there is a growing sense that the status quo, that got us where we are today, isn't good enough.

In solving ANY of those problems, at some point you face the same issue that you describe in regards to downtown revitalization. (Example: Farmers aren't happy about new air regulations, etc) Is it going to be easy? No. Can we bring everyone to the table and find equitable solutions? Maybe. Should we try? I would think so. We would be foolish not to.

Unfortunately, the best bet for Downtown would probably involve a very large amount of demolition and renovation, which is going to upset anyone who has any interest in Fresno's history. And anyone who depends on the area remaining as it is would, of course, be terribly upset about the harm to their personal business or lifestyle, regardless of the city's overall benefit.

The main problems to me are all the unsightly condemned buildings as well as absolutely terrible parking infrastructure, both problems that are expensive and hard to fix. I work downtown and I'm sick of just looking out the window and seeing a minimum of 4 ragged, condemned buildings full of vermin.