Two parking garages were built at Fancher Creek, then construction stopped. Now what?

Excitement over the long-anticipated Fancher Creek mixed-use development in southeast Fresno grew last year when dirt started being moved and two parking garages with space for more than 800 vehicles were built.

Visions swirled of a Target, Costco, sit-down family restaurants and movie theater within a short drive of the area of town long-starved of retail options.

Then construction seemed to stall, leaving many wondering what happened to the project that’s poised to rival north Fresno’s River Park.

“Had we gone in and just turned and burned, we could have had just a strip center or shopping mall in fairly short order,” said Sal Gonzales, president and chief operating officer for Lance Kashian & Co.

But developer Ed Kashian and partner Tom Richards of The Penstar Group want a quality project with an infrastructure that connects well to the surrounding neighborhood, Gonzales said. That means working hard to make sure water drains correctly, taking nearby homes out of flood plains, installing utility lines that are easy to hook up to and preserving the Fancher Creek canal, he said.

Parts of the Fancher Creek Town Center, located along Clovis Avenue south of Belmont Avenue to the canal, are in the design stages with more grading and underground work to begin gradually at the end of this year.

Full-blown construction is expected by mid-2018, Gonzales said, which could pave the way for the development company to begin leasing and working toward a first quarter 2019 opening.

The town center is expected to have about 970,000 square feet of commercial and retail space, multifamily housing and a park similar to Oso de Oro Park in northwest Fresno. It will have a Fresno Police Department substation, a Bus Rapid Transit station and a 1.5-mile walking trail along the canal.

The center is one of three commercial components of the Fancher Creek master-planned community. The others are the Fancher Creek Business Park at Belmont and Fowler avenues and the Village Center, a neighborhood retail center at Kings Canyon Road and Fowler Avenue.

Penstar has started construction on a 28,000-square-foot speculative building – without a specific use or tenant signed on – in the business park along Armstrong Avenue. Another 40,000-square-foot building will follow.

“The inventory in the market is pretty low,” said Scott Anderson of Penstar. “Now is the time to start building some spec space.”

Bonadelle Neighborhoods is turning dirt on the other side of the industrial park, along Fowler Avenue, to build 156 single-family homes in a gated community. The builder plans to begin sales in early 2018 and move families in later that year.

Here’s a construction timeline for the town center:

▪ Grading should start in October to level off the dirt on the site so nothing has to be removed or brought in during construction.

▪ Designs for the $6 million police substation at Tulare and Argyle avenues should be completed by December with construction to begin sometime in February 2018 for an October opening. (A Fresno County Sheriff’s station is also planned at Armstrong and Harvey avenues on the edge of the business park.)

▪ The developer is working on a storm drain master plan. This will affect traffic along Clovis Avenue at Tulare Avenue where a storm drain line will be installed. More drainage work is planned for the southern portion of the property and along the canal trail.

The plan should be completed this September. Construction is scheduled to begin in March and be completed by June.

▪ Once the sewer lines are installed, other utilities can follow. Power, gas, cable and telecommunications lines should go in by June and be finished by next September.

▪ Streets come next and take about 60 days to complete. At this time, the company will go hard on leasing to know who to build for, Gonzales said.

The developer is asking the public for suggestions on what to build at the town center. Go to fanchercreektowncenter.com to submit a suggestion.

Fresno City Council Member Luis Chavez tells residents to be patient. “We’re going to have the police station. We’re going to have the trail that the community will be able to enjoy along with housing, along with the retail portions,” Chavez said.

“We always complain about not having amenities like other parts of the city have … this is happening, it’s coming to our neck of the woods.”

This story was originally published September 1, 2017 at 1:06 PM with the headline "Two parking garages were built at Fancher Creek, then construction stopped. Now what?."