« Prices of Stadium Name Sponsorship Soar | Main | Atlantic Yards Camera Club »
February 11, 2008
EMINENT DOMAINIA: Forest City in the News
Fresno Bee, Keeping the city on hold
Downtown Fresno property owners have a hard time selling while they wait for a developer's plans.
By Jeff St. John
Last year, Atlantic Yards developer Forest City Enterprises cut a deal with Fresno, CA to be that city's sole developer of the downtown redevelopment zone. As the city waits for the developer's next steps, property owners remain in limbo.
The case of Forest City in Fresno is a prime example of how the spectre of eminent domain stifles private enterprise and organic redevelopment in a neighborhood that is seeking change.
Randy Miller and Robert Toman have a dream -- a downtown Fresno brewpub within baseball-throwing distance of Chukchansi Park.
And Miller's wife, Nancy, has the perfect location -- a former furniture store at 762 Broadway that has been in Nancy's family since her grandparents bought it in the 1920s.
But Broadway Ale Works -- the business the Millers and Tomans hoped to open in the 3,500-square-foot brick building with the well-known Francisco Vargas "Welcome to Fresno" mural painted on the outside wall -- is now on hold.
That's because the building lies within the six-block area the Fresno Redevelopment Agency intends to buy and lease to Forest City Enterprises, a massive Cleveland-based development company. The project is among 40 properties in the area that face an uncertain future.
Forest City has a $232 million plan to build 700 new homes, as well as stores and commercial buildings, in that six-block zone -- the first phase of the long-range "South Stadium" redevelopment project that eventually would transform 85 acres of Fresno south of the Chukchansi Park baseball stadium.
"Would that be good for downtown? Certainly," Randy Miller said. "Would it be good for us? Absolutely. But taking our building away? That's not so happy."
Posted by lumi at February 11, 2008 4:56 AM