Major renovations ahead for downtown Fresno parking garage. Here’s what’s in the works
A three-story downtown Fresno parking structure with space for more than 200 vehicles is in line for almost $3.5 million in improvements. But most of the work will be devoted to gutting part of the ground floor to accommodate the relocation of some City of Fresno offices.
Garage 9, at the corner of Van Ness Avenue and Merced Street, “requires a complete gut down to the studs,” Assistant Planning Director Phil Skei told the Fresno City Council on Thursday.
The work will include asbestos removal, mechanical improvements and other renovation work to eventually provide offices, cubicles, and other space for divisions of the city’s Planning & Development Department, including its community development, housing and homeless divisions
The project will also include trenching in the sidewalk from Fresno Street to put in new communication lines for the future city offices.
The ground floor of the building is already home to several commercial tenants, including Kocky’s Bar & Grill, Seasoned Trends Studio and the Fresno Arts Council, City Manager Georgeanne White said. Several other storefronts are vacant, including the space to be overhauled that formerly served as a Wells Fargo Bank branch.
Current ground-floor tenants will not be displaced by the work, White said.
On a 5-0 vote Thursday, the City Council awarded a contract for more than $3,462,000 to Katch Environmental Inc. for the renovation work. The contract price is about $260,000 higher than what city engineers had estimated the work would cost, according to a staff report presented to the council.
The former bank storefront offers just under 10,000 square feet of space, from a 2,346-square-foot basement to 5,213 square feet on the first floor and a 2,371-square-foot second floor, according to city records.
On Thursday afternoon, a walkthrough of the parking levels above the Van Ness storefronts revealed fewer than two dozen cars parked in the structure. In the stairwell leading from the ground floor to the top level, paint was worn off and rust was evident on the metal stairs, and the faint fragrance of urine hung in the air.
But the work is unlikely to make any substantial improvements to the portions of the building used for public parking — a precious commodity in Fresno’s downtown. At 213 stalls, Garage 9 is one of the smaller city-owned downtown parking facilities, ahead of only the Broadway/H streets lot near the Chukchansi Park baseball stadium with 210 stalls and the 90-stall lot at the old Fresno water tower at Fresno and O streets.
“It is one of our better garages in terms of condition,” Planning Director Jennifer Clark said. “It’s in relatively good condition compared to our other garages.”
