New owners plan ‘modern-day man cave’ at Fresno’s historic Bekins building

Drinks, music, space for cars and car lovers.

That’s the vibe that local developer Reza Assemi and his business partner, Jaime Gonzalez, are shooting for in their redevelopment plans for Fresno’s historic Bekins building, known for its Peelz Citrus mural visible from Highway 41.

“Think of your garage, like a modern-day man cave with a little bit of throwback all centered around cars and events,” Gonzalez told The Bee on Monday.

The duo is part of the group that recently bought the seven-story, century-old concrete Bekins storage building for an estimated $2.25 million, according to The Bee’s calculation using a transfer tax amount found in a Fresno County deed. (Assemi said he did not want to discuss numbers involved in the purchase because of speculators who are arriving in Fresno and “causing problems” with real estate values.)

The incoming developers said the roughly 56,320-square-foot building will continue to be used by the Fresno Bekins moving and storage company until the future plans are approved. Those plans are in the early stages, so it could be several years before any new construction begins.

But Assemi and Gonzalez envision a bar on the ground level, multiple floors devoted to car storage above that and space for music and entertainment on the seventh floor that could allow downtown’s Fulton 55 venue to bring more performances to Fresno.

Their idea is to give car lovers extra space to gather and put their vehicles, and to bring more people to the area south of Highway 41 — which they are calling “SoFo.”

Assemi is known for restoring old buildings in downtown Fresno, including the Sun Stereo Warehouse on Fulton Street and The Garage in the Brewery District, in ways that preserve their original architecture. But he said the Bekins building will be the first he’s worked on that has never gone vacant.

“This is going to be another positive step in the growth of downtown,” Assemi said.

Fresno’s century-old Bekins building still in ‘amazing condition’

Fresno’s Bekins building was built in the 1920s by the Bekins Van Lines family, which was known for building concrete storage “castles” during the 20th Century, The Business Journal reported in 2022.

The online listing of the property, located at 301 Van Ness Avenue immediately south of Highway 41, says the building was “one of the tallest in Fresno for decades.”

Today, the building still features a freight elevator with a 6,000-pound capacity and is still in “amazing condition,” Gonzalez said.

Assemi said Fresno’s city engineer told him during a walk-through of the “100% concrete” building that the material is actually about 10% stronger today because concrete gets harder over time.

“It’s still in its original use from the day it was built,” he said.

Transitioning the building into a new use focused on cars and events, Assemi added, will be like a “passing of the torch.”

“Bekins will still be, in a sense, a modern-day storage, but with a social aspect,” he said.

‘Like-minded’ car fans, events the new vision for Fresno’s Bekins building

Gonzalez said he and Assemi are looking to turn the building into a place where people walk in and “get that feeling” of car culture.

“We all have that problem where we don’t have enough space in our garages,” he said.

Floors two through six of the Bekins building, he said, will give people extra space to store their classic and newer cars and car parts so they free up their garages at home. But once there, Gonzalez added, the car fans will encounter “like-minded folks.”

He said events could be focused on Formula One, a class of car racing popular across the world.

“We’ll focus on that and focus on the youngsters also that are trying to get into this space and just want to be around like-minded people,” he said.

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.