Old Club One Casino space in downtown Fresno still empty after 5 years. Why so long?

One of downtown Fresno’s largest listed commercial spaces has sat empty for nearly five years, with no takers on the nearly 26,000 square feet of potential retail and office space a short walk from government buildings, hotels and downtown entertainment centers.

Passersby might see the building, with its distinctive green and gold Club One Casino sign, and think it’s still an active gaming house. But listing photos show there isn’t much more than old carpeting left inside.

Located at the intersection of Van Ness Avenue and Tulare Street, the building closed in 2020, when casino operations ceased because of COVID pandemic restrictions. Club One eventually reopened at a different location, leaving an empty shell in downtown that’s now been on the leasing market since January 2021.

The building is owned by a partnership between local investment and development firms Lance-Kashian and The Penstar Group. The partnership hope a new operator will reuse the building as “some form of entertainment venue,” said Chris Cammack of Fortune Associates, the firm looking for a new tenant for the space.

Why is it taking so long to find that tenant?

“The market is just tough right now, especially in downtown Fresno,” said Cammack, who has worked in local commercial real estate for several decades.

The empty casino sits next to a now-vacant building that was once a Radisson Hotel and across the street from a giant empty lot. The intersection — one of downtown Fresno’s busiest — has become a highly visible example of downtown’s continued struggles with empty, unused property.

Elliott Balch, president of the Downtown Fresno Partnership, called vacancies “the number one issue for us” and said the amount of unused space in the area has reached “the size of a shopping center.”

But to fill retail and entertainment space in the area, including the old casino, Balch says downtown needs a lot of foot traffic and the right mix of businesses in proximity to each other so they can share those customers.

He said reopening the Radisson Hotel building, which closed in December 2022 because of fire code violations, would help immensely because the casino and hotel would work well together as an entertainment hub.

Downtown Fresno hotel would help

The Club One Casino building is next to the 197-room Radisson Hotel space that has been empty since December 2022, when it closed because of fire code violations.

City leaders hoped the hotel would be renovated and reopened when a group of investors bought it in March 2023 for an estimated $9.27 million. But its owners recently listed it for sale again, this time for $14.9 million as a “hotel rebrand” or “apartment conversion” opportunity. So, the hotel building is not likely to reopen soon.

Balch said rehabilitating the space and reopening it as a hotel “is strongly needed” and would help add the foot-traffic necessary for the use of the casino building. He said the casino and hotel “have always worked well together” and would share customers.

“Much more than office or residential, retail and entertainment is a question of getting the right group of tenants in proximity to each other,” he said. “That’s the insight that we’re using to organize properties for occupancy here.”

Did Fresno County move hurt downtown foot traffic?

Cammack said one reason why downtown’s commercial leasing market is “tough” is Fresno County’s decision in recent years to move some of its operations, including its Department of Social Services, to offices in Clovis.

He said having a strong downtown commercial market takes “having a lot of employees there,” but the county’s move to Clovis meant a lot of employees left downtown, causing a reduction in foot traffic and potential customers.

There have been some inquiries over the years from interested potential tenants, Cammack said.

There have been no changes to the building, and Cammack said improvements would “take a lot of money.”

“Or they (tenants) will have to come in with their own money,” he said. “If we get a viable tenant, we are ready to make a deal.”

This story was originally published December 4, 2025 at 5:30 AM.

Erik Galicia

The Fresno Bee

Erik is a graduate of the Missouri School of Journalism, where he helped launch an effort to better meet the news needs of Spanish-speaking immigrants. Before that, he served as editor-in-chief of his community college student newspaper, Riverside City College Viewpoints, where he covered the impacts of the Salton Sea’s decline on its adjacent farm worker communities in the Southern California desert. Erik’s work is supported through the California Local News Fellowship program.