Word on the (Fulton) Street: April 5th, 2016

By Sam Joaquin

So it’s been a half-century coming, but the Fulton Mall (formerly Fulton street) is finally being torn up. To make room for… a street! Once this is complete, the city of Fresno is expected to begin their next bold plan: demolishing the houses in the “Old Fig Garden” area of town, and planting fig trees in their place.

Regardless, GBF will be on the scene each step of the way, giving you the scoop. This week construction began in earnest, with the usual silence of the Fulton mall replaced with the roar of chain saws and the rumble of large machinery. Also, instead of being completely devoid of people, the mall was bustling with construction workers standing around drinking coffee and pointing at stuff with gloved hands. Progress!

Seen from the Spiral Garage, the South end of the Fulton Mall is being cleared of the bane of Fresno: shade trees.

Despite the Mayor saying that many of the trees would remain on the mall, like any good Fresno development, this has begun with Fresno’s usual “scorched Earth” policy, involving killing every living tree, cutting them up into little pieces, and then separating all of the pieces -- Like how you would kill a vampire or dispose of a murderous robot.

These construction workers are using the “buddy system” while pruning this Elm tree to death.

The mall has been fenced off with shade netting covering the chain link fences, apparently to keep nosy Fresnans from seeing what’s going on in there. Luckily, however, our investigative reporting department was able to peek over the fence. The fences did have one interesting effect though: Where pedestrians were forced to the edges of the mall, essentially where they would walk if there was a street in the middle, it pushed them closer to the storefronts! Could this actually help the businesses on the mall? Only time will tell.

Pedestrians are now forced to walk dangerously close to businesses on the mall, in the “spending zone”. Watch your wallets, Fresno!

So there you have it: the progress from the first few days of a year-long project intended to fix what’s busted about downtown. It’s disappointing that all those trees had to go, but we here at GBF are giving Mayor Swearbear the benefit of the doubt – if she says the new Fulton Street will have lotsa trees, we believe her. And we here at GBF will be the first to report to you what kind of trees they plant, but it’s just too bad that you can’t plant a 50 year old elm tree. I wonder where you could find one of those downtown?