Despite shooting, locked gate is not a solution to Fresno’s park and river access woes
The reaction was so Fresno.
Something bad happens in a nice part of town, and the immediate response is to shut down the location “until safety improvements can be made,” according to a press release issued by Councilmember Mike Karbassi.
In the wake of Monday’s fatal shooting of 26-year-old Brandyn Harris at the Milburn Overlook, don’t be surprised if the scenic viewpoint is locked up for good.
Because that’s the Fresno way.
This isn’t about the city’s north-south divide, though it could be. When someone gets shot in a public park south of Shaw Avenue, does anyone beside the victim’s friends and family bat an eye? But when it happens up north, you get official press releases, expansive news coverage and residents that snap photos of your license plate and say things like, “We’re going to take our neighborhood back.”
Back from what, exactly? I searched The Bee’s computer archives and couldn’t find another instance of a violent crime at the Milburn Overlook.
The Milburn Overlook isn’t a park per se. It’s a small parking lot near the northern terminus of Milburn Avenue with expansive views of the Milburn Pond (a bird sanctuary managed by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife) and the San Joaquin River.
On a clear day, one can see much of the Sierra Nevada between Yosemite and Kings Canyon.
Vistas fall by the wayside
In the 1970s, plans called for 17 such scenic viewpoints, all open to the public, overlooking the San Joaquin River. But over the years, Fresno’s politicians and bureaucrats caved to pressure from developers (shocking, I know) and bluff residents who didn’t want riffraff in their tony neighborhoods.
“We just don’t want the public to find out there’s a nice little spot out here to cozy up,” one of them said in a 1991 Bee story, making no secret of her NIMBY-ism.
One by one, those scenic overlooks disappeared from city planning documents to the point where only three (so far as I know) currently exist: Milburn Overlook, Polk Overlook and Spano Park near Palm and Nees avenues.
Yes, that’s right. Not only does a city of 520,000 people have no public public access to the river that makes up its northwest border, there are only three vista points where you can actually see the San Joaquin.
Make that two, now that the Milburn Overlook is padlocked until further notice. And one of those (Polk Overlook) is inside a gated community.
The scene at Milburn Overlook
I drove out there Wednesday morning, parked outside the gate, snapped photos of the makeshift memorial left in Harris’ memory and spoke to two residents who are avid walkers.
The overlook, they tell me, is a place where young people meet to smoke joints or cigarettes. Office and city workers alike go there to enjoy their lunch and take in the views. During evening hours, when the gate is closed, there are rendezvous on Milburn Avenue that may be Tinder dates or may involve sex workers. Despite “No Parking” signs, it’s common to see two or three cars with people sleeping inside. Once in a while, a homeless person will erect a tent.
Let’s not speculate on the circumstances of Harris’ death. All we know for sure is the shooting occurred in broad daylight and, according to the Fresno Police Department, was preceded by an argument. The shooter then fled the scene.
If authorities really want to make the area safer, they’d install night-sensitive security cameras. They’d install streetlights, perhaps with motion detectors, and patrol the area with more frequency.
Simply closing the gate is not the answer.
More access increases safety
The biggest misconception regarding Fresno’s lack of park space and river access is that providing fewer locations makes things safer. In fact, the opposite is true. Give people more places to go, more places to enjoy the river and take in the views, and the impact gets spread out instead of concentrated in one or two spots.
Why is crime infrequent at Woodward Park, despite its heavy use? It’s because of what urban planners call “natural surveillance.” The more people you get in a particular location (aka “eyes on the street”) the more it serves as a deterrent for wrongdoing.
Of course, for natural surveillance to take effect, the public space in question needs to be designed in a way that feels open and social. That cannot be said about the Milburn Overlook which sits out of view save for the backyard of one adjacent house.
Karbassi, as it so happens, was recently appointed to the board of the San Joaquin River Conservancy, the state agency charged with establishing a 22-mile river parkway from Friant Dam to Highway 99.
I get why Karbassi had the gates locked to one of Fresno’s few scenic vistas. But in the long-term, let’s hope he understands that less public access to parks and open space is the biggest reason why California’s fifth-largest city so often feels unlivable.
