Featured Image: The Tower Theatre pictured at nighttime, from Visit Fresno County.
By James Pewthers
The Tower District, one of the most easily recognizable neighborhoods in Fresno, started off as a streetcar suburb in the early 20th century. As car-focused development became more commonplace, especially outside of major cities, the area remained and was appreciated as one of the most walkable places in the city.
But in the late ’80s, its pedestrian-friendly character was threatened by changes in zoning and planning. There were plans to widen Olive Avenue, and it was designated for general/heavy commercial use, which could have meant anything from auto repair shops to storage warehouses.
During this time, many residents like Joe Catania, who helped create the Tower District Preservation Association, feared that the historic integrity of the Tower District was at risk because of this. That fear was heightened by an unannounced demolition of a streamline moderne-style brick building on the outskirts of what’s now considered Tower’s commercial core.
“Look at Olive and Palm where the Circle K is. It was a wonderful historic brick building that housed an antique store, and one day the thing was totally demolished,” Catania said. “We thought, ‘Our neighborhood is going to be destroyed.’”
Michael Birdsong, who Catania met at the Fresno Art Museum, lived in the Mayfair district during that time, but had similar thoughts on the building’s unexpected demolition.
“I have nothing against Circle K. But I will tell you, that building is an atrocity compared to what was there,” Birdsong said.
Origins
This alarmed Tower residents, who wondered how something like this could happen without any input from the community.
“Back in those days, nobody gave notice to the community,” Birdsong said. “They just decided if they wanted to tear something down, they could.”
This catalyst, along with other developments, inspired people to organize. Catania and Birdsong, along with other community activists, started the Tower District Preservation Association. They began circulating petitions about their concerns in the community. They were signed by “thousands and thousands” of people in and outside of Tower, even as far as Visalia.
These petitions were presented to Craig Scharton, the former Fresno City Council member who oversaw Tower. He took their ideas to the City of Fresno’s Planning and Development Director, Nick Yovino.
“Nick decided that one of the best tools that we had to protect our neighborhood was the development of a specific plan, which none of us had ever heard of,” Birdsong said.
A specific plan regulates land usage and zoning in one area of a city, along with the architectural style of future development. Following many months of writing, meetings, and deliberation, Tower District’s own specific plan was made a city ordinance on Mar. 26, 1991 and it went into effect the following month.
Post-Specific Plan
After its passing, the TDPA worked towards their goal of growing appreciation for the Tower District, through hosting and supporting various causes and projects.
One of their biggest yearly events was a summer film series, where movies were projected on the west wall of the old Chicken Pie Shop, across from the Tower Theatre. Jim Piper, co-founder of Fresno Filmworks and an FCC professor who created its film studies program, provided the equipment for the events.
One story Birdsong remembers from those nights is when employees from the San Joaquin plant of PepsiCo, Inc. discovered an abandoned trolley car, named No. 76, in a lot on Clovis Avenue. It was blanketed in vines and weeds, but they restored it as much as possible, then eventually donated it to the TDPA on one of those summer film series nights.
It was stored at FCC until they could find a way to use and insure the trolley, but before they could, a student accidentally started a fire in the room it was in, “and the whole thing burnt to a crisp.”
“[I] came home from work one day and I had a call from the Fresno Bee, who wanted to know what I thought about that trolley that had been destroyed, which I didn’t know anything about,” Birdsong said. “I was flabbergasted.”
Despite this, the TDPA kept going, up until the early 2000s. Some other projects they were involved in were saving Fresno City College’s Old Administration Building from being demolished, and co-running the Tower Arts Festival during the ’90s with the Fresno Arts Council.
“We worked really, really hard to make all of those events happen,” Birdsong said. “It was fun, it was exciting, and it was extremely exhausting at the same time.”
Disbanding
In the early 2000s, the TDPA disbanded, citing their efforts with causes, community events, and the Specific Plan’s relative success.
“We thought that things were moving along in a good direction, and there were some other groups that were going to take our place and oversee and advocate for the neighborhood,” Catania said.
Birdsong said that there was also a dwindling membership of their board.
“We were all very tired. The board had mostly dissolved itself in terms of participation, there were just a few of us doing all of the work,” Birdsong said, who also worked for the California Department of Education at the time. “That required me to be at work for far too many hours a week, and I was exhausted. We just decided it was time to stop.”
He added that decision was a “huge mistake,” because the loss of the association’s group status meant they also lost their avenue for the City of Fresno to work with them. Birdsong cited that, along with the uncertainty of Tower Theatre’s future ownership, as two of many reasons the TDPA didn’t stay disbanded for long.
Adventure Church and Tower Theatre
Adventure Church, a local evangelical Christian church, operated in the Tower Theatre throughout the pandemic in 2020. In January 2021, it announced it was purchasing the theater, and people began protesting on Sundays during their services across the streets in the Chicken Pie Shop parking lot.
“We became alarmed, to say the least,” Catania said. “That land use is not in accordance with the Specific Plan, and that land use could have and most likely would have negatively affected the surrounding businesses.”
Along with how the LGBTQ+ community feels about a church that has never officially stated what their feelings are about them, a community that makes up a large part of the area, that was one of the biggest issues with their services taking place there. The Tower Theatre is zoned for commercial use, which doesn’t allow for religious assembly for a venue its size.
“I think zoning was an important tool legally, and it was used that way, as it should have been,” Alicia Rodriguez said. “That was the base issue from day one, that they weren’t even supposed to be in the building in the first place.”
Because of this development, Birdsong began sharing old materials about the TDPA on social media, which caught the attention of Rodriguez. She helped to run the protests, and is the co-owner of Labyrinth Art Collective (LAB) in Van Ness Village.
“I met him while I was running the protests, and we ended up having a couple of conversations on his porch, and I felt like there needed to be something like that in place for the long term,” she said.
Based on those conversations, Birdsong got in contact with people who previously worked or had experience with the TDPA, and got it off the ground again.
While the TDPA did not have a formal presence at the protests, they lobbied the city to honor the integrity of the specific plan, and to keep the Tower Theatre in the public domain.
The protests continued on for months. After a legal battle between multiple parties that lasted for nearly two years, the city bought the theater, and the church had to move their services to one of their other two campuses in the city.
New Management
Last month, the city council handed management of the theatre over to 809 Olive Avenue, LLC.
There were a few different bidders for the theater’s management, including the theater’s previous owner and the Fresno Arts Council. Although none of the entities were required to, 809 and the FAC were the only groups to seek community input about how they want to see the theater be utilized.
Whether or not this group uses and provides this space well “remains to be seen,” Rodriguez said.
“I would hope they follow through on the promises to communicate and procure input from the community, and collaborate with the community,” Rodriguez said. “We did bring up a lot of concerns, not only about what types of entertainment, because I think that’s important, but what’s also important is how they run operations there and how it’s going to affect the community around it.”
There’s also questions on how the space could be used by community groups for meetings and events, since there are several spaces in the theater available for that.
She noted she wants to see equity and inclusion be addressed by the new management.
“I would like to see the Tower Theatre actually belong to the neighborhood, in more ways than one,” Rodriguez said. “I want to see audiences that look like the neighborhood going in there.”
Current Projects and the Specific Plan Update
Now that the Tower Theatre’s management is no longer a question, the TDPA is focusing its energies elsewhere.
The Hearts on Fire Rock n’ Roll Choir, which Catania is a part of, performed the entirety of The Beatles’ “Abbey Road” album on Apr. 29. The show, which was the first TDPA fundraiser since reforming, sold out the Tower Theatre.
Rodriguez is focusing more on Labyrinth nowadays, so she stepped down from the President position earlier this year, but she plans to work on more community outreach within the neighborhood.
“What we’re really looking at is getting the community more engaged in their own advocacy,” Rodriguez said. “We saw in recent years with the very loud issue with the Tower Theatre how something like that has been needed for some time.
Birdsong originally didn’t plan on staying on the board, but decided to continue with it later on.
“I told [Rodriguez] that I would be willing to participate for the first year, and I would like to kind of fade away, but that didn’t happen yet. So I’m actually more active now than I was then,” Birdsong said. “Some things are in your blood, I guess!”
He’s also on the specific plan’s new committee to update and implement the plan. It has been over 30 years since the plan was originally written and passed, so updates and changes are needed.
The Tower District Specific Plan’s Implementation Committee had their last meeting at the end of February, and their next meeting is taking place in the Tower Theatre Lounge, on May 16 at 5:30 p.m.
Flourishing Fresno 