Update, mystery solved: Downtown Fresno’s ‘missing’ traffic bollards quickly found
The mystery of downtown Fresno’s missing bollards has been quickly solved.
Hours after my column published Thursday asking about the whereabouts of dozens of short metal poles purchased for the 2017 reopening of Fulton Street, they were found by the city’s redevelopment successor agency right where they were supposed to be: inside the long-abandoned Berkeley’s building at 887 Fulton.
Fresno City Councilmember Miguel Arias tweeted about their discovery with three photographs of the stacked bollards — apparently during Thursday’s council meeting.
“Mystery solved, thank you @marekthebee for shining a light and @CityofFresno for finding them. Now @fresnodowntown let’s put them to good use,” Arias tweeted.
The bollards, purchased for $71,000, and including the installation of 48 hinged cover lids on Fulton between Tuolumne and Inyo streets, have never been used and are seldom seen.
Employees of the Downtown Fresno Partnership, the property-based business improvement district responsible for the bollards, were not able to locate them inside the two-story building at Fulton and Kern, with its leaky roof and suspected black mold.
The publicly owned Berkeley’s building (technically property of the city’s redevelopment successor agency, which purchased it for $1.45 million in 2007) has been largely abandoned since 1982. It has been the target of numerous recent break-ins.
The powder-coated steel bollards will be moved to a more secure location and brought under city control, Fresno’s Public Works Director Scott Mozier said.
Because the bollards were believed to be missing, the Downtown Fresno Partnership rented wooden A-frame barricades to close streets during special events, such as last month’s Fulton Street Party.
Next time, hopefully, someone will break out the bollards, now that they’ve been found.
This story was originally published December 2, 2021 at 11:40 AM.
