Know those blue ‘Tourist info’ signs? Guess where the ones in downtown Fresno lead
Let’s pretend four European tourists are leaving Yosemite National Park in their rented SUV. Headed south on Highway 41 bound for L.A. but in no particular hurry to get there.
After a couple hours, the six-lane freeway they’re driving on bisects a city of 540,000 they know little to nothing about.
“Fresno? What’s there to see in Fresno?” one of them asks, in whatever language they happen to speak, as the rented SUV approaches downtown.
Just then, on the side of the freeway, appears one of those inconspicuous blue signs with white lettering. So inconspicuous that locals drive past them every day without a second thought.
The sign says: Tourist Info. Two words accompanied by an arrow indicating take the next exit.
So our Euro quartet does that very thing. They exit at O Street and turn right as told by the next sign. (Drivers on northbound 41 exit at Van Ness Avenue and are directed to O Street via San Benito Street.)
Once on O Street, our tourists drive underneath an archway welcoming them to downtown and along rows of Chinese pistache, maple and oak trees. They drive past the Cosmopolitan restaurant, the state appeals courthouse, several office buildings, parking garages and surface lots.
Just not the tourist info they’re after. Those blue signs they followed off the freeway have vanished.
There are two brown historical site signs on O Street, one with a drawing of the Old Fresno Water Tower.
Except when our fictional European tourists arrive at the actual water tower, they find it closed and guarded by a chain-link fence. No sign of any tourist info. So they climb back in the SUV, head back to the freeway and put Fresno in the rearview mirror without spending a nickel.
Yes, that scenario was made up. Made up of entirely plausible events. We’ll never know how many Yosemite tourists or anyone else driving past on 41 followed those blue signs off the freeway, only to get back on with a negative impression.
Rather than a warm welcome, Fresno gives them the cold shoulder.
The Old Fresno Water Tower has served as both an official and de facto visitors center since 2001. However, the 128-year-old brick beehive has been closed since March 2020, and its $1.2 million renovation (which was supposed to be completed by now) and cafe conversion are several months behind schedule.
Why does Fresno mislead tourists?
To find anything tourism related, one must head several miles north. Specifically, to a tucked-away office building near Shaw Avenue and First Street (so tucked away that it confuses the heck out of GPS navigation apps) where you’ll find the second-floor suite that houses to the Fresno/Clovis Convention & Visitors Bureau.
It was there that President/CEO Lisa Oliveira handed me an official Fresno County visitors guide and only let her beaming smile lapse for an instant when I wondered aloud why Fresno would intentionally mislead tourists with freeway signs that lead nowhere.
“Those are very good questions, but the answers are above my pay grade,” Oliveira replied. “The city of Fresno and Caltrans are in charge of those signs.”
Indeed they are. So I asked the questions to Miguel Arias, the councilmember who represents downtown.
“Those signs should have been removed years ago, when the tourist office went away,” Arias said.
The tourist office Arias is referring to belonged to the old Fresno Convention and Visitors Bureau, which fell victim to budget cuts in 2010. It was replaced by the Fresno/Clovis Convention & Visitors Bureau, a tourism business improvement district created by hotel and motel owners in both cities and funded by a 1% per night room assessment.
Removing the signs is one option. A better one would be to reface them, or erect new ones, directing passers by to visitfresnocounty.org, the Fresno/Clovis Convention & Visitors Bureau website. (This being 2022, there’s also a smartphone app.)
Anything’s an improvement over freeway signs that promote tourist information and deliver only frustration.
