Much needed investment in Fresno’s historic Chinatown district comes at a price | Opinion
By the time excavators started ripping apart one of Fresno’s most culturally significant landmarks, the Bow On Tong Association joss house had already succumbed to the combined ravages of neglect, vandalism and fire.
Any chance to preserve and restore the two-story structure at 930-934 F Street, a place where the city’s early Chinese immigrants worshipped, socialized and lodged, had long passed. Unoccupied for three decades and deemed structurally unsound, the building was condemned after being completely destroyed in a March 4, 2022, fire that investigators believe was set by a homeless person.
Since then, the Bow On Tong joss house stood behind a chain-link fence as a charred eyesore sandwiched between adjoining buildings that house two of Chinatown’s signature eateries, Chef Paul’s Cafe and Ho Ho Kafe.
The City of Fresno purchased the property in January using $67,000 in state funds and will spend $1 million demolishing and clearing the site, according to Councilmember Miguel Arias. (Great care must be taken not to disturb the building’s shared walls.) After that, as officially announced by Mayor Jerry Dyer and Arias, a Request For Proposal will be prepared for a developer to construct a 35-unit affordable housing project partially funded by a $43.7 million grant from the California Department of Housing and Community Development.
“There’s a time to tear down, and there’s a time to build,” Dyer said during a Monday press conference, after which an excavator continued peeling away at what remains of the Bow On Tong joss house.
“Today marks the beginning of a time to tear down, but it will be followed by a time where we build this area back up.”
Evidence of Dyer’s words could be heard in the jackhammer operating a block away and seen in every “Road closed” and “Detour” sign erected throughout Chinatown – a confluence of decades-long disinvestment course-correcting at the same time.
As the city’s original “wrong side of the tracks” neighborhood, Chinatown is disconnected from downtown Fresno by design. That isolation has grown since late 2017 when three streets linking Chinatown to downtown (Tulare, Inyo and Mono) were closed by the California High Speed Rail Authority. Mono Street reopened in 2021 as a temporary railroad crossing following the closure of Cesar Chavez Boulevard (formerly Ventura Street).
The two new underpasses on Tulare and Cesar Chavez are now scheduled to open in June and December, respectively, according to Dyer. Just don’t bet your life savings on that. Both projects have blown through multiple projected opening timelines.
Chinatown a construction zone
In the midst of high-speed rail construction, Chinatown’s water and sewer lines are currently being replaced – part of California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s $250 million investment pledge to overhaul downtown Fresno’s aging infrastructure. (The city has received $50 million so far. Dyer said he hopes Newsom will pony up $100 million more next year in the governor’s proposed budget.)
While work continues below ground, the streets of Chinatown are being refurbished and made more livable with new decorative streetlights and shade trees irrigated with recycled water. Broken sidewalks on F Street are being repaired, while adjacent China Alley between Kern and Inyo streets will get a permeable ground surface to prevent water from pooling when it rains.
Those improvements are funded by the state’s Transformative Climate Communities program, which allotted nearly $7 million to Chinatown Urban Greening as part of the $67 million package awarded to Fresno in 2019.
“Right now it does feel like everything is coming at us all at once,” said Central Fish Company owner Morgan Doizaki, one of Chinatown’s signature businesses.
While Doizaki and others are thankful for the barrage of government investment in an area that has been forgotten about since the 1960s – when hundreds of old buildings were torn down in the name of “urban renewal” and the construction of Highway 99 – they’re a little uneasy about what things might look like when the dust settles.
Within Dyer’s plan to revitalize downtown, the mayor envisions Chinatown as the city’s “international culinary district” to celebrate the neighborhood’s diverse heritage (besides Chinese, immigrants from 11 other diaspora settled there) and take advantage of the current array of restaurants.
Affordable housing the tonic?
More housing is also on the horizon, expanding upon the TCC-funded The Monarch @ Chinatown that opened in 2023 at F and Mariposa streets and whose 57 units are only available to low-income households.
With the city now planning a second affordable housing development where the Bow On Tong joss house is being razed, as well as a third at the boarded-up Peacock building steps away on F Street, there is concern whether future residents of Chinatown’s main hub will have the discretionary incomes necessary to support its businesses.
“There is no way to revitalize Chinatown if people who live there cannot afford to shop and eat in the neighborhood,” said Jan Minami, project director of the Chinatown Fresno Foundation. “No market force in the world that is going to come in and level that out.”
Dyer suggested private investment in downtown has stalled due to uncertainty over the bullet train, including the yet-to-be-built Fresno station, but expressed confidence it can be spurred.
“People have purchased buildings and not done anything with them in hopes that high-speed rail would be developed,” he said. “And the delays of high-speed rail being developed has caused many of these buildings in downtown and Chinatown to remain vacant.
“So we have to step in now and do our part.”
Thanks to government money, the empty space on Chinatown’s main drag where the Bow On Tong joss house formerly stood won’t be there long. That’s the good news. The bad news is the hole left by its absence can never truly be replaced.
