Building donation, truck reroutes, investment offer hope for beleaguered Fresno street | Opinion
Envisioning a brighter future for the Belmont Avenue corridor from downtown through the South Tower District requires a healthy scoop of optimism.
Plus the ability to see beyond the construction zone with a half-finished high-speed rail overpass, blocks of buildings either vacant or dilapidated, semi trucks parked near homes, passers-by who appear unhoused or unwell, and very little tree shade.
But if you squint hard enough and assemble a few moving pieces, there are encouraging signs.
As they say, both in “The Wire” and Fresno, it’s all connected.
This month’s revelation that the city’s most visible grain silos on H Street near Highway 180 will be demolished, and the razed property evidently used for truck parking, turned out to be only one piece of the puzzle.
Last week, Producers Dairy owner and CEO Scott Shehadey stood alongside Fresno City Councilmember Miguel Arias at a news conference announcing the company’s intention to donate a 1.83-acre lot at 450 E. Belmont Ave. and its two long-vacant historic buildings that once housed the Central Valley Cheese factory to Radio Bilingüe.
The nonprofit Latino radio network plans to transform the site into its new headquarters and a community event space – as soon as the $10 million necessary to renovate the property can be raised. (Assemblyman Joaquin Arambula has secured $2 million in state funding, and Producers Dairy will contribute an undisclosed sum.)
“Our goal is to be able to accept this rare opportunity made by Producers Dairy, and to be ready as soon as possible,” said Radio Bilingüe founder Hugo Morales, who grew up near Belmont Avenue.
Once that happens, Producers Dairy will need to find someplace else to park dozens of refrigerated trailer trucks that access the site via residential streets – a practice that has long infuriated its neighbors.
Although the company isn’t saying so explicitly, the outside expectation is that those trucks will be relocated to H Street where the grain silo stands (but not for long).
“We are committed to removing trucks from the property at 450 E. Belmont and helping find a solution to truck traffic in residential areas,” said Aldi Ramirez, chief of staff for Shehadey Family Foods. “What that solution is, we don’t know.”
Producers Dairy and South Tower residents have long had an uneasy relationship. In 2018 a handful protested the company’s plans to demolish the cheese factory buildings for extra parking by blocking its driveway.
While Arias believes the Radio Bilingüe conversion will greatly reduce truck traffic in the neighborhood, not everyone is convinced.
“I don’t see it being a net positive,” said Jacob Bailey, a homeowner who also serves as board member for the South Tower Community Land Trust.
Bailey added he is “super pumped” about Radio Bilingüe moving nearby but skeptical of Producers Dairy’s true intentions: “We are still bearing the burden of that industrial use and those trucks – even if they’re moved a couple blocks.”
Two big transportation projects
Two major transportation projects – one currently underway, the other coming soon – that will forever alter vehicle traffic in the South Tower add to the uncertainty.
The most visible is the Belmont Avenue Grade Separation, a 2,100-foot long overpass designed to carry motorists up and over the existing freight tracks and future bullet-train route. The new overpass will replace the historic underpass and traffic circle that opened in 1932, when Highway 99 ran between Roeding Park and the railroad tracks.
Less obvious is Caltrans’ “rehabilitation” of 99 between El Dorado and Clinton avenues, scheduled to begin this fall. As part of that $260 million project, Belmont’s freeway onramps and offramps will be removed.
Once the overpass is completed and the Belmont exit disappears, the designated truck route for Producers Dairy vehicles and others will be H Street to Weber Avenue (which will run beneath the overpass) to the Olive Avenue exit on 99.
According to the city’s Community Truck Reroute Study released in July, the rest of the Tower District (the area bounded by McKinley, Blackstone, Belmont and Weber) is a designated Truck Bypass Restriction Zone. That includes Palm, Olive and Wishon.
While trucks aren’t prohibited from driving in Truck Bypass Restriction Zones, they are discouraged from doing so by the use of signage, education campaigns, GPS updating and “proper enforcement.”
What that means has yet to be determined.
Arias: South Tower ‘top priority’
When everything settles, the combined effect should result in better living conditions for one of Fresno’s longest-neglected neighborhoods. One that still bears the effects of segregated housing policies enacted a century ago.
Arias, who terms out in 2026, said making investments in the Tower District south of OIive would be the “top priority” for his remaining two-plus years in office.
To that end, $4 million in federal funding handed down during the pandemic is being spent replacing streets, curbs and sidewalks on residential streets north of Belmont.
“All those neighborhoods had never been touched,” Arias said.
Improvements to Belmont itself are scheduled to follow after the high-speed rail overpass and related construction is completed. This includes new street medians, the addition of shade trees to supplement existing palms and refurbishment of nonoperational street lamps into LEDs.
Meanwhile, the city has stepped up enforcement of businesses that act as illegal drug markets and the vacant buildings and houses where users go to get high. The owners of a smoke shop at Belmont and Van Ness previously caught selling fentanyl were cited Wednesday, Arias said, and property owners have been placed on notice.
“We have to address the anchor points of blight in that area,” Arias said.
None of that will be easy, or simple. But the pieces to progress in the South Tower are lining up at long last.
