Democratizing development. Can going small solve neighborhood problems in Fresno?

Development in Fresno’s Chinatown tends to be a wait-and-see proposition.

The historic neighborhood, 18 blocks of mostly commercial space running between Fresno, G, and Ventura streets near Highway 99, sits in a neglected part of the city that also happens to be directly in the path of California’s High Speed Rail project.

That proximity has brought some needed attention, along with the promise of tens of millions of dollars in federal money for needed infrastructure improvements. It has also kept business and property owners on the sidelines, as they wait out the road-blocking construction that has made navigating the neighborhood nearly impossible.

“We think it’s important to revitalize Chinatown whether high speed rail comes or not,” says Jan Minami, Project Director for the nonprofit Chinatown Fresno Foundation. “When the construction is gone ... wow.

“We need to be ready for that.”

Changing neighborhoods with small-scale development

To that end, the foundation has been working with the Incremental Development Alliance, a national nonprofit that helps local entrepreneurs and civic leaders create small-scale real estate projects as a means of neighborhood revitalization.

In March, Incremental Development Alliance hosted a Small Scale Strategies meetup and Q&A with its acting director, Alli Thurmond Quinlan. More than 80 people attended.

Next up is a day-long workshop April 24 to further walk would-be developers through the process of getting a project off the ground. Attendees will get a base-line on the development jargon (what exactly is a pro forma, for example) along with a primer on things like navigating city zoning laws, site planning and financing.

Traditionally, development in cities has been monopolized by those with the most resources, says Neil Heller, an urban planner and faculty member with the Incremental Development Alliance.

In many cases, it’s written right into zoning codes.

“By right,” he says, “they allow the biggest, largest thing.”

So, conventional developers look to build entire blocks of commercial space or apartments, or full subdivisions of single-family homes.

The alliance’s scaled-down focus fits in places where large scale developers won’t operate. It’s what Heller calls the democratization of development.

Or, “real estate development for regular people,” as its phrased on a slide in the workshop’s training materials.

”These are people who have been looking at a lot, or looking at a building and saying, ‘wouldn’t it be nice if?‘”

Lessons from the Lowell Neighborhood

Esther Carver is one of those people.

As the executive director Lowell Community Development Corporation and the general manager of the Central Fresno Neighborhood Trust she has been involved in small-scale development and seen its impact on the community.

She took part in a boot camp the Incremental Development Alliance held in Fresno in 2021 and used the knowledge she gained directly to work on several community projects.

The value of the training, she says, is that it gives you, quite literally, a template to use.

“How do you go,” she says, “from seeing a piece of land, to building something there, to housing people or whatever?”

The Lowell Community Development Corporation was created in 2011 and set out to acquire and renovate old houses in the neighborhood just north of downtown. The houses would be resold, as a means of putting ownership back into the community.

Since then, the organization has made available dozens of single- and multi-family housing units.

“Look at the Google images in 2012 versus now,” Carver says.

Where there had once been an empty lot, there’s now an eight-unit affordable housing complex called the Fenix at Glenn. A block over on Calaveras Street is another 30-unit apartment complex.

“You can see in those two properties, we were so intentional,” Carver says.

“This needs to fit in the community.”

The organization’s latest project is a commercial space on Broadway Street just under the Highway 180 overpass. The building had long been vacant; the owner was using it for storage. It will become the corporation’s permanent offices, but also a community meeting space — something that’s been lacking in the neighborhood.

“And then it has this huge backyard that is just dirt,” Carver says. Because the land is zoned for neighborhood mixed used, there is a thought to add housing, possibly several tiny homes. An architect just signed on to the project, Carver says.

“We just need to start doing it different. And we’ll have to start doing it really small.”

None of this will change the big system, mostly likely, but Carver says, it does change how regular residents interact with surroundings. It’s a movement toward self efficacy, she says.

“It puts power back into a neighborhood, a community.”

What’s next for Chinatown?

In Chinatown, Minami is hoping that has some direct results.

She’d like to see at least two housing projects and two flat-land commercial developments come out of April’s Small Scale Development Workshop.

She already has ideas. The second floor of the Nippon Building on Kern and F streets could be renovated into a dozen small (220 square feet) apartments. There’s also a lot on Tulare Street where she could see some mixed-used development, maybe with a ground-floor diner, Chinatown being known for its food.

“It’s not enough,” Minami says, but it could happen.

“I think it’s realistic. I do.”

This story was originally published April 12, 2025 at 5:30 AM.