A second Amazon fulfillment center is coming to Fresno. Neighbors are pushing back
The Fresno City Council on Thursday approved an agreement between a warehouse developer who is set to bring about 1,000 jobs to the city and the residents of the neighborhood affected by the construction project.
The first-of-its-kind settlement agreement brokered by city officials will allow the developer, Leland Parnagian, to build a 470,000-square-foot warehouse that will operate 24/7, year-round as long as the developer contributes money to a community benefit fund to help residents make improvements to their homes to protect from extra light, noise, traffic and air pollution created by the operation.
The agreement is noteworthy for a number of reasons.
First, construction of the warehouse is set in an industrial area, sometimes called Fresno’s “reverse triangle,” where Amazon and Ulta already have fulfillment centers near Orange Center Elementary School and about 100 homes. While the developer has not publicly said who the warehouse tenant will be, sources told The Bee it’s Amazon.
Second, residents already won — with the help of environmental justice lawyers and the California Attorney General’s Office — a long, hard battle with the city of Fresno to keep additional warehouses out of their neighborhood, one of the most polluted areas in the state.
Yet the city’s director of planning and development quietly approved in December changes to the development permit for the new project with no public input and little additional environmental review, raising questions about the possibility of additional litigation.
“People decided to move out here a long time ago because this is where they could live their so-called ‘American Dream,’” said Rosa DePew, whose family has lived in the area for more than half a century. “Then, here comes the city, without any notification, and they’re building and making it harder for us to live in this area.”
The solution: the settlement agreement.
Months-long negotiations between city officials, the developer and Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability resulted in the agreement that became public Thursday afternoon. The City Council approved the deal Thursday evening during a special meeting. The vote was 6-0 with Councilmember Esmeralda Soria absent.
What’s in the agreement?
The proposed settlement agreement binds the resident group, South Fresno Community Alliance, and Leadership Counsel, the nonprofit environmental justice group representing residents, from suing the city over the project, and it requires the group to abandon its appeal of the project. Under the agreement, the city and developer will pay no attorney fees to Leadership Counsel.
According to the agreement, the city of Fresno will facilitate $300,000 paid by the developer for improvements and installations to offset light, traffic, air and noise pollution to residents’ homes. No city money will be used.
The agreement also calls for the city to find funding and extend city water and sewer services to residents’ homes through federal, state and local programs.
Under the agreement, residents would receive air filtration and filter systems in their homes.
It also includes a number of measures to study traffic patterns and take steps to protect pedestrian safety, such as installing traffic control signs, enforcing truck parking restrictions and potentially requiring trucks to use alternate routes. It calls on the city and county to work together on a pedestrian and cyclist safety plan with the help of residents and to seek funding to make the plan a reality.
City staff must analyze policies and programs for new development to find ways to promote and incentive hiring residents who live near the project.
Now that the agreement is in place, city officials will complete an environmental review of the area for future projects.
From farmland to warehouses
Neighbors of the budding warehouse district next door have put down roots.
Cho Yang’s family for years rented farmland across from Orange Center Elementary. In the late 1990s, Yang’s parents bought the 12 acres, where they grow vegetables, flowers and other plants.
DePew, the longtime resident, grew up in the home where she lives now, and many of her neighbors’ homes are 80-100 years old, she said.
Another resident, Panfilo Cerrillo, said he’s lived in his home since the 1960s.
When the weather gets nice, like it’s been in recent weeks, residents enjoy taking walks outside along the canal.
Young children often walk to Orange Center school along roads where there’s no sidewalks or crosswalks.
Foxes, pheasants and quail were often spotted and heard.
Now, the area is a hodgepodge of farmland, houses, the school and massive warehouses where Amazon and Ulta Beauty orders are fulfilled and shipped.
“I haven’t seen a quail or a fox in a very long time,” Cerrillo said. “They took their habitat away.”
Many of the residents are immigrants and don’t make much money. The area is county land bordering the city limits, and residents said they often feel overlooked and underrepresented by their government.
“We’re out in the country. It was always pretty quiet,” DePew said. “Then, all of a sudden, these buildings started coming up. We had no idea what they were.”
Big trucks use the roadways, which now are crumbling and have many potholes. Cars whiz by at 50 mph on the routes students take to school or near the canal where residents walk. Ahead of shift changes at the warehouses, cars exit Highway 41 and stretch down the road, backed up at the four-way stop on Cherry and Central avenues.
Cerrillo said his elderly father used to take walks along the canal. But now, it’s too dangerous.
DePew, Cerrillo, Yan and other residents deal with the increased traffic, noise from the warehouses’ 24/7 operations, vehicle pollution and bright lights shining onto their homes. Plus, they worry about their water supply, which comes from private wells.
“That’s impacted us in little ways. Sometimes you don’t notice it because you learn to live with that,” DePew said.
Still, the residents wish city and county leaders would’ve taken responsibility to prevent some of the nuisances. The least the government agencies could’ve done was notify residents, but that didn’t happen, the residents said.
“I know the city and the county, they try to play this game, where they go back and forth and say, ‘Hey, this is your responsibility. No, it’s your responsibility.’ They’re in this argument and then we’re in a predicament where we’re just stuck with what they decide,” Yang said. “It’s definitely frustrating.”
Cerrillo participated in a number of meetings over the last few years with former Mayor Lee Brand and other city directors to discuss the environmental impacts of the warehouse projects and how to move forward responsibly.
“It turns out, all those meetings kind of seemed like a waste of my time because they were going to do whatever they wanted to anyways,” Cerrillo said.
The government agencies need to re-evaluate how they deal with future projects as a courtesy to the residents who have lived in the area for decades, Yang said.
“I want to see Fresno succeed. You want to see your local community succeed, but at the expense of somebody else is not how I want to approach it,” he said. “I feel like there could be a win-win situation. As long as we come to the table and discuss and rationalize, we could come to an agreement.”
Healthy neighborhoods and job creation
For years, city leaders have grappled with ways to create jobs for a city with a high concentration of poverty without further polluting the neighborhoods of color still suffering effects of historically racist land use policies and government disinvestment.
The settlement shows it can be done, said City Councilmember Miguel Arias, who helped negotiate the deal for the industrial site in his district.
“This agreement is an example that we can facilitate the coexistence of creating new jobs without impacting the health and safety of our neighbors,” he said. “Simply put, this agreement does what should’ve occurred years ago.”
This story was originally published March 11, 2021 at 2:35 PM.