The Fulton Mall is a six block long pedestrian mall in Downtown Fresno, constructed in 1964. It stretches from Tuoloumne Street at the north, to Inyo Street at the south, and occupies the former right-of-way of Fulton Street. Smaller cross malls at Merced, Mariposa and Kern Streets bisect the Fulton Mall and extend to the alleys on each side. It was one of the first downtown pedestrian malls in the nation, and helped spur many other cities to undertake smiliar ventures in the 1960's and 1970's.

The mall was the centerpiece of an urban renewal plan by Victor Gruen Associates to transform Fresno's downtown area, and enhance the Central Business District's (CBD) reputation as the retail center of a six county region, and to halt a decline in downtown property values. The mall's construction was funded in part by the federal government, as well as by the city of Fresno, and downtown business interests. The pedestrian mall concept, as described by Gruen, was an effort to take back the public space from the automobile, and provide a more pleasant atmosphere for pedestrians. The mall was designed by noted modernist landscape architect Garrett Eckbo, and is known both for its innovative design and its impressive collection of public art.

Prior to the construction of the pedestiral mall, Fulton Street served as a busy thoroughfare, and was Fresno's main commercial corridor. Most of the area's large department stores and clothiers were located there, including Gottschalks, JC Penney, Rodder's, Coffee's, Walter Smith, Roos-Atkins, Berkeley's, Cooper's and many others. The street was home to a large number of mid rise and hi rise offiice buildings, constructed in the boom years prior to the Great Depression. Until 1939, electric streetcars of the Fresno Traction Company ran on Fulton Street, connecting residential areas to the heart of downtown. Just one block to the west sat Highway 99 (today Broadway Avenue), and two blocks away, the Southern Pacific Railroad Depot. To the east sat stately Courthouse Park and the Civic Center. With its central location, and dense collection of retail and commercial uses, Fulton Street was Fresno's "main street" and the heart of city.

However, in the era following the Second World War, Fulton Street began to change. As the city grew northward, new suburban shopping centers, such as Fig Garden Village and Manchester Center, began to redefine the retail landscape of the San Joaquin Valley. In search of a solution to halt the decline of their business interests and property values, downtown merchants turned to one of the most innovative and influential figures in American commercial and retail architecture, Austrian emigree Victor Gruen. Known today as the "father of the shopping mall," his Northland Center in suburban Detroit was American's first outdoor subruban shopping mall when it opened in 1954 and sparked a wave of copycat developments nationwide. Later in 1956 he developed the nation's first indoor shopping mall, Southdale Center in Edina, MN. But Gruen's vision of a shopping mall was not confined to the suburban context. Instead, he sought to take the concepts that proved successful in the Northland Center, and apply them to an urban setting in an effort to remake the American downtown. In 1955, his company unveiled a massive "superblock" plan for downtown Fort Worth, that would have banned automobiles from a wide swath of the city. Though never built, the plan generated a considerable amount of national interest, and led to the construction of the nation's first downtown pedestrian mall in Kalamazoo, Michigan, which was completed in 1959.

With his pedestrian mall concepts gaining international acclaim, in 1958, Gruen's company was hired to develop a comprehensive plan for the redevelopment of Fresno's downtown. It included new freeways, parking, high rise office and residential developments, a new downtown traffic pattern, and the centerpiece - a six block long pedestrian mall on Fulton Street. Once again, Fulton Street would be the center of commercial activity, not just of Fresno, but of the entire San Joaquin Valley region. After years of study and debate, construction began in March of 1964, and the finished pedestrian mall opened to Valley shoppers on September 1st of that year. It opened with great fanfare and an audience of dignitaries that included California Governor Edmund G. "Pat" Brown, and a crowd of thousands. The opening ceremonies capped off a week-long celebration of arts and culture dubbed the "Fresno Festival."

 

The mall itself was designed by modernist landscape architect Garrett Eckbo, and includes over a dozen water features, hundreds of trees and shrubs, and a diverse collection of artwork from both local and international artists, ranging from contemporary abstract sculpture to an original bronze by Auguste Renoir. The art collection was funded entirely with donations from the local community, with donations that totalled $185,000. Today the collection is valued in the millions. The mall consists of a variety of different elements which are inspired by nature and the agricultural roots of the Fresno area. Numerous water features punctuate nearly every block of the mall. Several of these fountains include fired clay standpipes by local artist Stan Bitters, which represent the irrigation standpipes from which water flows on countless Valley farms. Tile mosaics by local artists Joyce Aiken and Jean Ray Laury help to provide color and visual drama to the mall's seating areas.

Plantings on the mall include grapes, olives and figs, all of which are major crops in the San Joaquin Valley. Several water features have a linear theme, with water cascading down from a large pool or fountain down a narrow trough or through other pools, which represents the route that the Valley's lifeblood takes, as it cascades down the Kings and San Joaquin Rivers from the high Sierra to the Valley floor. The mall's concrete, though faded and patched in many places, still bears traces of its original color, dyed a light brown to mimic the color of the Valley soil which gives this region its life, and much of the world its food. The mall's surface is punctuated by undulating ribbons of cast concrete set with river stones imported from Mexico, providing a unique rhythmic quality to the mall's pavement. Eckbo's organic concept of landscape architecture can also been seen in the design of the many pools, seating areas and planter beds, which often take on an almost free-form shape of curves and angles, creating secluded spaces for rest from the warm Valley sun. In 1969, a free speech plaza was constructed at Fulton and Mariposa, on the site of the former Grand Central Hotel, adding to the public space of the mall.

Gruen's plan, which was never fully realized, called for a perimeter surface street loop, the eventual closure of Fresno and Tulare Streets where they crossed the mall, the creation of a downtown freeway loop, extensive parking garage facilities, and downtown housing. The eventual goal was a streetless "superblock" - an 18 block area free of automobiles, a "city of the future." Upon its completion in September 1964, the mall was hailed as one of the nation's boldest and most innovative efforts at urban renewal and drew worldwide attention. The mall received several national design awards, including honors for "Excellence in Community Architecture" (1965) from the American Institute of Architects, and the "National Design Excellence" award from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (1968). A short documentary film about Fresno and the construction of the mall, commissioned by Victor Gruen's firm, was screened at the White House in 1968 for an audience of dignitaries including First Lady, Lady Bird Johnson. 

The initial success of Fresno's mall helped spur a new trend of pedestrian malls across the country that continued throughout the second half of the 1960's and into the 1970's. Communities throughout the nation sent representatives to Fresno to tour the mall and apply the same ideas to their struggling downtowns, in search of similar revitalization. Fresno's mall merchants enjoyed success, with improved sales, and remained popular with shoppers throughout the remainder of the 1960's. New parking garages were constructed, and a new convention center, arena and theatre all contributed to what was considered a national success story in urban renewal. But problems still remained. Early projections for the amount of new development the mall plan would generate proved to be overly optimistic. In addition, parking issues remained a source of frustration. Gruen's plan called for a collection of multi-story garages to be built to accommodate downtown shoppers. However, such projects were very expensive, and though eventually were built, the interim solution resulted in most of the Broadway Avenue business district being leveled to make room for surface lots.

Retail had its own set of challenges. Plans for a major development, including a department store at the center of the mall at Mariposa, also never materialized. And while the southern end of the mall between Inyo and Tulare Street thrived with major anchor retailers such as Gottschalks, JC Penney's, Berkeley's and Walter Smith, the north end between Fresno and Tuolumne Street struggled, and lacked a similar collection of major retailers. The Redevelopment Agency recognized this imbalance, and in 1968 together with a southern California based developer, launched an ambitious plan for hi-rise development mixing office and retail, and home to an "international agri-mart." In early 1969 the agency purchased all of the land on the mall north of Merced Street, began evicting tenants, and cleared the two block site to make way for the half-million square foot development. But a slow economy and other factors left the development without an anchor tenant, and by 1971 the development deal fell through, leaving an empty lot. The following year, Longs Drugs opened its new downtown store on the site relocating from their prior mall location at Tulare Street. But the 1 story building, with a main entrance that faced a surface parking lot and not the mall, was a far cry from the proposed 7 story high rise and retail development. Later plans for the site also included an indoor shopping mall, and later a farmers market, but nothing materialized. Much of the site sat vacant into the 1980's.

But even more than individual projects that failed to live up to overly ambitious expectations, the real seeds of downtown's decline were being sown at city hall. Throughout the planning process that led up to the construction of the mall, Gruen continually emphasized that the mall was just a small part of his larger plan for Fresno's downtown, one which also encompassed the freeway system, and new residential development, and a maintained focus on the Central Business District as the main retail center of the region. Such an ambitious plan would require a level of political commitment significantly greater and longer lasting than that which was required to build the mall itself. The lack of such long-term political vision and will, ultimately proved to be downtown's downfall.

Despite over $50 million in public and private funds investmented in downtown from 1964-1969, there was another development force that was even more powerful - suburban sprawl. Fresno, like many other western cities, continued to expand outward at a starling rate, with subdivisions quickly overtaking the area's once iconic fig orchards and vineyards. New housing tracts in North Fresno produced shoppers, and commercial developers were eager to construct new centers in the suburbs to serve them. And with a change in federal funding for freeway construction that effectively stalled the creation of freeways 41, 180 and 168, driving from the suburbs to downtown wasn't as easy as Gruen's plan had envisioned.

The fortunes of the Fulton Mall and of downtown in general took their biggest hit 1970, with the opening of Fresno Fashion Fair, a 58 acre regional indoor shopping center at the corner of First and Shaw in north Fresno, near the campus of Fresno State. Anchored by major retailers Broadway Hale (Weinstocks), JC Penney's and Gottschalks, and numerous other specialty retailers, Fashion Fair was located close to Fresno's rapidly growing northern suburbs, and its opening coincided with an immediate decline in downtown retail business. Fashion Fair was a controversial development, as Gruen's plan (and thus the city's general plan) called for the Fulton Mall to be the focus of regional retail activity. Likewise, the College Community plan called for Shaw avenue to be built as a lushly landscaped boulevard with low density offices and neighborhood retail.

Following the opening of Fashion Fair, the "erosion" of the downtown commercial district continued, but at a swifter pace. By 1973, less than a decade after the opening of the mall, the Fresno Bee asked the question "Is the Gruen Plan Dead?" The year before, the City had commissioned a study which concluded Gruen's plan relied too heavily on retail, and that downtown needed increased office, entertainment and residential uses, suggesting that a turnaround was possible within a decade. The 1972 report by Lord, Tyrrell & Associates even entertained the possibility of shortening the mall as a potential solution. However, the retail decline continued, and the mall (deservedly or not) gained a reputation as an inconvenient and unsafe shopping destination. Downtown Fresno, which less than fifteen years earlier had been touted as a nationwide example of successful urban renewal, had hit hard times. By 1974, the city in-effect admitted defeat, adopting a new general plan that called for "multiple centers" of activity, embracing the suburban model and abandoning the Gruen plan.

City leaders debated various plans and projects for revitalization. A downtown lake, a new indoor downtown shopping mall, a downtown Macy's and Price Club, all garnered attention from politicians and the press, but little interest from developers. By the early 1980's most of the original mall specialty retailers were gone - Hodge and Sons, Coffee's, Rodders, Walter Smith, all left for more profitable pastures. In 1986 J.C. Penney's closed their downtown store, followed two years later by Gottschalks, the last of the major mall retailers. In their place, came a new influx of government office workers, and small lower end retailers, catering to a diverse clientele. Major downtown mid-rise office buildings, such as the elegant Bank of Italy building, sat vacant and dark, their former tenants now renting more fahsionable garden type office buildings in North Fresno. At the same time, many communities across the nation began to rethink their ideas about urbanism, urban renewal, and began to modify or remove their downtown pedestrian malls.

The late 1980's and early 1990's brought a new focus on "what to do" with downtown Fresno. In 1992 city commissioned the Ratkovich Company to develop a new plan for the revitalization of downtown Fresno, which called for a partial opening and redesign of the Fulton Mall, as well as a downtown baseball stadium, two way traffic and a farmer's market. Another plan by landscape architect Paul Saito that same decade also called for opening of the mall to traffic, with a new downtown water feature. Two later studies by the firms ELS Architecture, and the Urban Land Institute both also called for the limited opening of the mall to traffic. The city also proposed an ambitious river walk, which would have turned a portion of the mall near the stadium, as well as other downtown streets into a man-made river or canal.

While the proposed changes to the mall did not occur, the plans for a baseball stadium moved forward, albeit slowly. After a long debate about the financing of the project, Grizzlies Stadium (now Chukchansi Park) opened in April of 2002 with great fanfare and predictions that a rebirth of Fresno's long suffering downtown was at hand. While the stadium has served to bring new people downtown, and has been successful as a new entertainment and recreation destination, it hasn't yet achieved the larger revitalization success that its proponents suggested. In early 2005, Ohio based developer Forest City announced a proposal for an 85 acre mixed use development for the South Stadium Area. Plans included the construction of a Bass Pro retail sporting goods store as the anchor tenant. The proposal later called for an emphasis on housing, with a smaller retail component. While the project promised to transform a major section of downtown, many in the area raised concerns about eminent domain, and the significant amounts of public money ($100 million) that would be required to make the project a reality. In early 2009, shortly after the completion of an environmental study on the project, the firm announced that it was abandoning the development, a victim of the global economic recession of 2008/2009.

Today, the Fulton Mall remains at the heart of Fresno's downtown. While the large department stores are long gone, small mom and pop retailers, offering everything from evening gowns to electronics, occupy the six block pedestrian mall. The area is also home to a growing number of restaurants. In 2009 a popular twice-weekly certified farmers market opened at the center of the mall at Mariposa. New penthouse loft condos are in the works on the upper floors of the former Security Bank Building, and renovations continue on many other properties. Other historic buildings, like the TW Patterson Building and the Fresno Guarantee Building have been restored and are filled with office tenants. Local and federal agencies have a large presence on the mall, adding to the office population. The now mature mall landscaping provides a canopy of shade for shoppers, a welcome respite from the heat of the mid-summer sun. The mall is also an important community gathering place, particularly at the free speech area at the center of the mall. The mall is home to a number of free community festivals, such as Cinco de Mayo, Hye Fest, Rev Fest, Fiestas Patrias and El Grito.

Important Documents and Resources:

• Application to list the Fulton Mall on the National Register of Historic Places
• Article about the Fulton Mall - Cultural Landscape Foundation
  
• Article about Garrett Eckbo - Cultural Landscape Foundation
  
• Vision 2010 - Destination Downtown
  
• Downtown Vision Report - 2003
  
• 2006 Fulton Mall Report
  
• Downtown Traffic Infrastructure Study Chapter 8 - Fulton Mall
• Complete DTIS study