Warehouse Row project transforms old downtown Fresno buildings into new office space

Life has returned to a cluster of historic brick buildings that were once home to downtown Fresno’s earliest commercial businesses.

The Wormser Warehouse, the Western Meat Co. packing plant and Fresno Consumers Ice Co. building in the 700 block of P Street, near the Amtrak station, have been transformed from vacant, crumbling remnants of Fresno’s boom era into new office and commercial space.

Developer William Dyck of Summa Development Group in Fresno calls the seven-year, $13 million rehabilitation project Warehouse Row.

“It’s nice to have this one finished,” Dyck said. “I really like building in downtown. I really enjoy the old buildings. It’s a ton of fun even though it’s a little bit of a quagmire because you don’t know quite what you are starting with until you open them up.”

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is expected to move its office from the Fulton Mall, where it has operated since June 2004, into 35,000 square feet of the 75,000-square-foot development by the middle of September. The office has about 70 employees, said spokeswoman Sharon Rummery.

There are 21 other tenants in smaller offices, including immigration consultants, lawyers and technology firms, Dyck said. Still to come is a restaurant.

The Warehouse Row project started in 2008, a year after Dyck bought the properties from Fresno architect Art Dyson. The warehouse had tenants, but the other buildings on the 1.5-acre block, between Inyo and Mono streets, were vacant for decades.

The timing couldn’t have been worse. The nation was in a recession, with new construction at a standstill. On the flip side, it gave the project time to go through the entitlement process and the necessary historical reviews, Dyck said. The properties are all on the National Register of Historic Places. It took Dyck four years to get permits to begin construction in 2011.

“There was a lot of background work that happened when not a whole lot was going on at the site,” said Dyck, who specializes in revitalizing old buildings and working with government agencies. He was the developer for the Small Business Administration’s downtown office on R Street in 2010.

The simple, rectangular brick Wormser Warehouse with arched windows was built in the early 1900s for the Wormser Furniture Co. The building says 1903, but historic photos show the building once had the year 1909 painted on it, which is the correct year it was built, said Karana Hattersley-Drayton, the city’s historic preservation project manager.

People might know the building as the former home of the UpStairs Downtown restaurant, which operated on the second floor. It closed in 2007.

The structure’s iconic stepped parapet facade and the words “Old Fresno” painted underneath remains in place. Two years ago Dyck renovated the bottom floors, which includes a basement. Tenants including Sheer Bliss massage and skin care, LDA Notary and P Street Studios.

“I really like the feel, the location of the place,” said Sandra Villegas, the notary owner, who has been in the basement since April.

In this industry “you want to be near the courthouse,” she said. “It worked out pretty good for me …. and now with the immigration (office) being there, I think it was good choice.”

Next door is the two-story Western Meat Co. built in 1910. It was expanded in 1919 with loading docks along the entire front and back of the building. In 1932, the company was sold to Swift and Co. and was converted to a turkey production plant. A tunnel was built from the building to an eviscerating plant across P Street in 1951. The tunnel no longer exists, Dyck said.

South of the meat building is the ice company built in 1903. The original two-to-three-floor brick building was demolished in 2008 after the roof caved in and the building was declared a safety hazard by the city. It is now a dirt lot with plans for a future building.

The ice company’s concrete three-floor addition, built in 1928, was renovated into office space with retail on the bottom where a restaurant is interested in opening, Dyck said.

All three buildings were gutted and their shells reinforced and retrofitted to withstand earthquakes. A fourth narrow structure between the meat and ice companies was torn down and a new building made of steel and glass, inspired by the Pacific Science Center in San Francisco, was built in its place, Dyck said.

The four structures make up one facility. They are connected seamlessly inside so people can walk from one end to the other without having to go outside, he said.

“We were strongly encouraged to use contrasting materials” for the new building, Dyck said, “hence the steel and the glass, something that makes it very modern.”

National standards for the rehabilitation of historic properties don’t encourage developers to create false history by designing new buildings to look like the old, said Karana Hattersley-Drayton, the city’s historic preservation project manager. “You want something compatible but that says, ‘Hey I’m new and I’m proud of being new.”

Dyck is all smiles as he talks about the end of the project.

“It’s nice to put these buildings back into service,” he said. “They’ve basically been underutilized for about 40 years.”

This story was originally published July 23, 2015 at 2:02 PM with the headline "Warehouse Row project transforms old downtown Fresno buildings into new office space."