Why does Fresno tear things down? Behind the demolition of River Park-area restaurants
Two big Fresno restaurants were demolished recently, leaving eye-catching blank spaces on the same busy intersection in the River Park area.
On one side of Blackstone and El Paso avenues is empty land where Romano’s Macaroni Grill stood before it was torn down in April. No new tenant has been announced for the spot yet, though the shopping center is in talks for one.
Logan’s Roadhouse once dominated the property kitty corner across the intersection. That building also was torn down earlier this summer and is surrounded by a fence as work starts on a new Raising Cane’s Chicken Fingers with a drive-thru.
In Clovis, the former Pier 1 store on Shaw Avenue was also torn down to make way for a Raising Cane’s.
The sudden demolition of the buildings left some Fresnans ruffled and wondering on social media why the buildings — both a little more than 20 years old — were torn down.
A Fresno-focused post on the online conversation site Reddit.com titled “Buildings torn down the moment they’re unoccupied” had 27 comments.
Throw in the recent removal of the giant abacus art from the 1950s outside a bank at Blackstone and Ashlan avenues, along with a church gutting the 104-year-old Hardy’s Theater downtown and the topic of things being destroyed in Fresno is in the spotlight.
Work on historical places is a separate issue, but as for the north Fresno restaurants, the poster on Reddit had this question: “Does anyone have any insight into why buildings in Fresno are razed to the ground the moment they become unoccupied? … This seems massively wasteful since they always seem to be rebuilt and used for the same purpose, so there must be a logical reason for the land owners to do this.”
Macaroni Grill and Logan’s Roadhouse
Sometimes it’s cheaper and easier to start fresh, noted Shawn Miller, the city of Clovis business development manager. He was not involved in the River Park changes, but spoke generally about the topic, including the Raising Cane’s coming to Clovis.
“I think 100% of the time it would be awesome if they could fit whatever the new business is into the old building. Unfortunately, it just won’t work sometimes,” he said. “It’s cheaper in some cases just to scrape the whole thing and rebuild from the ground up, rather than retrofit.”
Sometimes the new businesses just don’t fit.
Raising Cane’s is much smaller than Logan’s, for example. The fast food chicken restaurants average between 2,500 and 3,500 square feet and the Logan’s building, built in 1999, was 8,000 square feet.
Raising Cane’s declined to comment for this story, but if the Fresno location it builds is similar to the one underway in Clovis, it will use much of the space to build double drive-thru lanes.
Restaurant designs have also changed in recent years, noted Steve Rontell, a retail broker with Colliers International who helps businesses and landlords with leases and sales of property, but was not involved in these deals.
Now, restaurants want smaller buildings, bigger patios, drive-thrus and curbside pickup spots, he said.
They often have specific designs and plans already drawn up that they build in each city.
Prime locations like the spots on north Blackstone are appealing to big national chains. Often, they will sign a ground lease, where they pay millions to build their own building and lease the property it’s on long term. Such leases usually last about 15 years, followed by options to renew every five years, Rontell said.
It’s a process that all but rules out smaller, independent restaurants that don’t have the money to build their own restaurant, but provides a solid long-term renter for the shopping center.
As for River Park, the shopping center will likely end up constructing a new building that can house several businesses, said spokeswoman Tracy Kashian.
Said Rontell: “The Macaroni Grill was big, obsolete … kind of a pre-Covid-style dinosaur. I think it’s smart that it’s gone. It opens a up a wonderful corner there at River Park. If they haven’t already, I’m sure they’ll attract a fantastic tenant.”
If they had tried to rent the old building to another tenant, it’s likely a restaurant wouldn’t take it, and it would be turned into a store or a medical facility, he said.
Kashian said the company doesn’t take the decision to tear down lightly.
The shopping center owner, Lance-Kashian & Co., owns the historic 1913 Rowell Building in downtown Fresno, for example, which was renovated to house the Fresno County District Attorney’s Office, she noted.
But the Macaroni Grill building, built in 1998, doesn’t have historical value and is not in good shape, she said.
“It wasn’t kept up to our standards,” she said, noting that the building sat empty without much maintenance from the restaurant after it closed in April 2020.
“It’d be very hard to put another tenant in there,” she said. “By tearing that down, we can make a newer building, a larger building. We have a better use of the space.”
River Park already has someone in mind to occupy it, though Kashian declined to say who.
“We’ve been talking to a tenant for a long time trying to find the right spot for them to come to Fresno,” she said. “That’s definitely a great spot.”
What about the environment?
When a new building is built, it usually has the most modern energy-efficient systems and the latest designs to make it accessible by disabled people and to meet the Americans with Disabilities Act.
In the long run, it could be better for the environment to tear down and build new, Rontell said.
But is it really more environmentally responsible to demolish a building? Isn’t that wasteful?
There’s no black and white answer to that question, said Dalton Ho, a senior sustainable building advisor at Perkins & Will, a firm with a focus on green building design.
Less of the demolished buildings may end up in a landfill than people expect, as municipalities usually have strong guidelines to prevent that from happening. Metals like steel and concrete can be easily recycled, he said.
But developers don’t always factor in the cost of the energy (like manufacturing the steel and concrete) it takes to build the original building or the new one, he said.
Since the restaurants are on private property, the owners can do what they choose with them, including tearing them down.
“There is no incentive really for developers to maintain an existing building,” he said. “Until we do that, this will continue to happen.”
This story was originally published August 16, 2021 at 5:00 AM.
