Fresno's 'Sin City' on road to redemption

Plans are in the works to revamp low-income El Dorado Park area.

Published online on Wednesday, Oct. 14, 2009

In the 1960s, it started out as off-campus student housing and earned the name Sin City for its residents' lifestyles.

Then the students moved to newer places and the urban poor arrived -- southeast Asian immigrants at first, a more diverse group later.

Now, almost a half-century after it was built, the El Dorado Park neighborhood is being positioned for a rebirth.

Today, the City Council is scheduled to vote on a new land-use plan intended to attract public and private investors to this enclave of poverty in prosperous northeast Fresno.

By itself, the plan does not improve the neighborhood's physical condition. It doesn't allocate money or provide financial incentives to developers.

But its authors hope it will set the stage for public funding from affordable housing programs and, eventually, private investment by property owners and small developers.

"Without a plan that includes some kind of vision of what is to come, no government agency will invest there, and probably no private investor will either," city planner Sophia Pagoulatos said.

The plan that the council will consider was drawn up in a series of public meetings over the past two years.

It calls for major improvements like a broad landscaped strip linking the Wesley United Methodist Church on Barstow Avenue with the Stone Soup nonprofit group's complex at Fourth Street and Bulldog Lane.

It also calls for minor design changes like front-facing windows in new residential structures -- a step intended to reduce crime by putting more "eyes on the street."

The idea isn't to remake the whole neighborhood at once, but to establish policies that will steer it in a better direction.

"It's going to be incremental," said Rollie Smith, Fresno field director for the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, whose agency is considered likely to contribute funding.

"It's going to take some time," as well as public subsidies, Smith said. "Then it's just a matter of building confidence in the area."

All of this has been tried once before in Fresno, with a plan for Pinedale that is not yet three years old. Still, longtime El Dorado Park residents like Laddavone Mekdara say change can't come too soon.

Mekdara has lived on Bulldog Lane for 20 years and praises her building's owner for a quick response to any problems with her apartment. But she said some of her neighbors aren't as happy with their landlords.

"They say, 'OK, OK, I'll be right there,' and then they never show up," she said.

Residents who gathered around a Stone Soup conference table Wednesday told stories of roaches and rats in their apartments, and feral cats that overran the neighborhood and brought a plague of fleas. They spoke of menacing outsiders they sometimes see on the street.

Stone Soup director Kathy Garabed said that after its Sin City days ended, the neighborhood was dominated by Hmong, Cambodian and Lowland Lao immigrants like Mekdara. Now it is more ethnically diverse, she said, but also includes paroled sex offenders in one building.

The changes make the longtimers wary and watchful.

"We know every block that we walk," said Paul Phouangpheth, who came in 1983. "We know all the kids in the area."

Yet they stay despite the changes.

"They are used to this area," Mekdara said. "That's why they don't want to move out."

If the plan works, El Dorado Park could gradually be transformed.

The plan calls for mixed-use buildings -- shops downstairs, apartments upstairs -- on the two northern corners of Sixth Street and Bulldog Lane. Housing for students or seniors could be built next to the church on its six acres, which form the plan's northern edge.

"We don't have a project that we're ready to propose, but in all of the conversations we have shown interest and been encouraged to think about our properties," pastor Vickie Healy said.

Stone Soup already has an architect's design -- but not much funding yet -- for a new building that will include a community center and rooftop garden for the neighborhood.

One aspect of the plan has sparked concern in the neighborhood north of Barstow -- a proposal to extend Sixth Street, which now ends in a cul-de-sac, to create a four-way intersection with Millbrook Avenue at Barstow.

University Portals Homeowners Committee President Jean Allen told the city Planning Commission last month that some of her neighbors are worried about the traffic that may result.

"I told them to be sure you leave the speed bumps there, and plenty of stop signs," Allen said.

Still, she said she supports the El Dorado Park plan as a whole.

"We're very much in favor of getting that neighborhood taken care of," she said.