Blighted downtown Fresno building poses fire-risk concern for Warnors Theatre
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Vacant building on Fulton St. concerns Warnors after Chinatown fire.
- Building owner has received multiple nuisance notices from the city of Fresno.
- Property manager says building is visited every week by ownership.
A blighted building in downtown Fresno, owned by an LLC that’s received multiple code enforcement notices in the past decade, is causing concern for the safety of the historic Warnors Theatre next door.
Nicole Owens, the theater’s executive director, told The Bee she’s had to contact the manager of the long-vacant, 9,500-square-foot building at 1440 Fulton St. multiple times when she’s noticed leaks and things broken. She said the adjacent building’s condition has caused the performance center to spend more money on pest control.
“But most of all, I’m concerned with the fire risk,” Owens said.
In a Wednesday phone interview, Gustavo Lopez, the property’s manager and brother to its owner, did not respond directly to fire-risk concerns but he said the building does not have pests. If the Warnors Theatre has dealt with pest issues, “maybe it’s from the other buildings nearby,” he added.
The building was previously a church, but it went vacant after its current owner bought it in 2018 through Phix LLC. The LLC was incorporated in 2014 and is listed under the “real estate investment” category, according to state business records.
Fresno County property records show Phix LLC, incorporated in 2014, has received notices related to public nuisance abatement charges from the city at multiple properties it has owned over the past decade, including 1440 Fulton Street. The city issues the notices after it has spent money to fix a property’s public nuisance issue, which could include the presence of junk, unkempt foliage or other conditions related to blight, according to Fresno’s Municipal Code.
Lopez said his sister planned to turn the building at 1440 Fulton St. into a nightclub when she bought it, but plans changed years later, and it’s now up for sale again.
“It is a vacant building,” he said, “but we go through it every week.”
Owens’ comments come after a vacant, roughly 130-year-old building burned down Dec. 7 just a half-mile away in Fresno’s Chinatown neighborhood, which has been the site of numerous vacant structure fires in recent years. Downtown Fresno has its own list of long-term vacancies that not only work against the city’s goal to bring more residents and visitors to the area, but also pose a continued risk to historic buildings from people who break into unsecured structures and start fires to stay warm.
Fresno’s Warnors Theatre is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and Owens said it’s “one of the most important theaters built between L.A. and San Francisco.”
“We saw what just happened in Chinatown, and seeing that broke my heart,” she said. “Not just for the loss of that historic building, but knowing what that could mean for the other historic buildings in the area, including ours.”
LLC has received multiple public nuisance notices
The Bee located county records that show the city’s Code Enforcement Division has charged Phix LLC for abatement at three different properties in the past decade. The notices do not specify the type of problem the city had to fix, but say “the city has incurred abatement and/or enforcement costs” that Phix LLC had to pay off.
In September 2016, Code Enforcement sent a notice to a Phix LLC residential property on Poppy Avenue in southwest Fresno with $505.48 in unpaid abatement costs. The LLC cleared the city’s lien on that property by July 2019.
The LLC received a notice of public nuisance abatement for its 1440 Fulton St. property in December 2019, and cleared the costs just a few months later. In October 2021, the LLC received a notice from the city for a property owned on Millbrook Avenue near Highway 180 and finished paying the costs off by May 2022.
In December 2023, the 1440 Fulton St. property received a notice of special assessment for abatement costs from the city. The notice says the city assessed $160 in unpaid costs onto the property’s taxes.
The Bee asked Lopez why his family has sat on the boarded-up building for so long without investing into it, and he reiterated that his family previously planned to turn into a nightclub but those plans didn’t pan out.
1440 Fulton St. listed for sale after years vacant
The building at 1440 Fulton St. is listed for sale online with an asking price of $795,000. A transfer tax amount found in a deed for the property indicates Phix LLC bought it for an estimated $225,000 in 2018.
On the commercial real estate site LoopNet, the listing appears with old photos of the building that still depict it as a church.
The building, constructed in 1946, “requires renovation” on the interior and is being sold with “deferred maintenance” conditions, the LoopNet listing says.
Lopez said his family only put it up for sale again about a year ago after deciding they would not use it to build a nightclub.
This story was originally published December 19, 2025 at 7:00 AM.
