This downtown Fresno property will soon be empty. Cue the nostalgia
Office Depot in downtown Fresno is closing – but many Fresnans associate this property with much more than paperclips and printer paper.
The property at Divisadero and Tulare streets was once home to a thriving business called the Farmers Market. It housed not only vegetable sellers but numerous restaurants and shops.
Office Depot Workers are telling customers the store’s last day is Feb. 21.
The Farmers Market was torn down in 1995, with Office Depot built shortly after on the site. It was the only major brick-and-mortar office supply store providing thousands of office workers in the area with office supplies.
Office Depot did not immediately return a message seeking comment about why, but the retailer has been steadily closing stores — 1,100 since 2013, the same year it merged with OfficeMax.
Remember the Farmers Market?
But many Fresnans remember the property for what it was 30 years before it became an office supply store. They frequently post memories of the visiting the Farmers Market on Instagram and Reddit.com posts.
It opened in 1948. Farmers sold apples and oranges and more from booths. Mayfair Market was added in 1953 and it changed its name to the Plaza Shopping Center. It had a distinctive windmill on top.
A column from former reporter Paula Lloyd detailed the restaurants that operated there: “the famed Iran Restaurant (Eleanor Roosevelt, Richard Nixon, Pat Brown and William Saroyan ate there), See’s Candies, Sudden Service dry cleaners, radio station KGST, Sound Movie Service, Jim’s Cafeteria, Fisherman’s Grotto, McCall’s Gift Shop, Bruce’s Barber Shop, Rossi Pizzeria, Round Up Bar-B-Q, Savory Foods, The Laundromat, Rexair Vacuum Cleaners, Nell Humphrey Lingerie Shop, Custom Tailor Shop, Market TV and Appliances, Muriel’s Beauty Shop, The Coffee Bar and Three Minute Car Wash.”
The property was remodeled for $1 million in 1979. By 1982, it had returned to the Farmers Market name. The 60,000-square-foot building had a food court style of dining.
By then, restaurants included Castillo’s Mexican Food, Dai Ichi, Darlene’s Deli, The French Connection, Grandma’s Buffalo Chips cookies, Little Kraut Haus, Phillie’s Fountain, Potatoes and Toppings, Rice Bowl, Richie’s Hot Dogs, Rossi’s Pizzeria and Round Up Bar-B-Q, Bee archives show. Hungry Bear Cookies was there, too.
There were some familiar names involved.
Dave Milutinovich, who recently sold the Manhattan Steakhouse & Bar, co-managed the food court. At one point. Ed Kashian, CEO of the firm that developed River Park, was also head of the organization that owned the Farmers Market.
Bee columnist Eli Setencich recalled the place in its heyday: “Those were the days when the market was a city within a city, a scaled-down version of the Los Angeles Farmers Market where you could get your hair cut, shoes repaired, television fixed, sweet tooth satisfied in addition to a bellyful at Rossi’s or Beckman’s or Castillo’s or the Iran.”
But over the years, the businesses struggled and the building deteriorated.
The remaining tenants were evicted in the mid 1990s, with plans to knock the building down and build an Office Depot. Several of them sued and lost.
The property was sold to Office Depot, which opened in 1995.
Property records show Office Depot sold the property to Wolfsen Land & Cattle Co. of Los Banos for $5.3 million in 2009. No one immediately returned a message about future plans for the building.
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