1989_03 The Daily Collegian March 1989

              Page 10     Wednesday. March 1. 1989
The Daily Collegian
Pemaps the sole merchant on
the Fulton Mall who actually
celebrated the exodus ol
Gottschalks and J.C. Penny's
and Woolworths: Arlln Pauler,
owner ot a sandwich shop, saw
the corporate retail outlets as a
hlnderance to his own vision,
which he calls "tolklsm," a
scheme where the "little guy,"
the individual owner runs the
show and reaps the benefits.
Thor Swifi/Dai/y Collegian
MALL
Continued from page 9
the Patterson building—once by a man
with cuts on his face who said his fanbelt
snapped, once by a man who showed me
his bus ucket from Oakland and said he
needed three dollars lo buy a birth
certificate, and once by a man in white for
the Soldiers of ihe Cross of Chnst
Church, but by then I was out of change.
Then came the T.W. Patterson
building. And the lobby's two-ucrcd brass
chandelier and the polished marble walls
and ihe black-and- whiiecheckcrboard floor
and the sculpted archway. A shoe-shine
stand and a hairdresser and a giftshop a
mini-mall all us own, a palace under
scige.
In suite 712 that day Carl Larsen was
on the phone, and whenever a call would
come in on another line a message
machine would answer it The reason
nobody would answer the phone is
because there was nobody else in suite���7 i 2 thai morning to answr it. In fact
there is nobody else but Carl L.arscn in
suite 712 every morning, which means
thai the paid staff of the Downtown
Association of die city of Fresno consists
of precisely: one.
This one person comprising the whole
of the Downtown Assoc lauon staff sat at
his desk lhai morning, sipping coffee
from an "Action News" mug and
scrolling up and down his word processor.
The person to whom Carl Larsen was
speaking that morning was Larry
Artenian, ihe president of the Downtown
Association, a non-paid position, but the
one-sided notes of thai conversation were
declared taboo when Carl Larsen got off
the phone and said, "I assume it's
understood that anything you may have
heard there is 'off the record.'"
Which is to say that Carl Larsen,
unlike many of the principles I came in
contact with, has a certain level of media
savvy. In fact much of what Carl Lai sen
says wavers between activist and
revolutionary political jargon. Thai day.
Carl Larsen, who also panicipales m die
Central Area Task Force, created in 1986
to study downtown's decay, talked of
"diverging interests" and of "timing" and
of "worthy avenues" and of "channeling."
Of focussing on "conditions rather than
causes." And of course "image." But Carl
Larsen also talks of "decay lines"
"creeping further" into downtown, of
cancers which must be "arrested" and
"destroyed," which I suppose is just a
more polemical  way of talking aboui
image.
"The biggest thing we're battling down
here is image. Under that big broad title
called image' comes"—and here Carl
Larsen paused and his voice grew
deeper—"aesthetics and security." From
Carl Larsen's office, one can see the
Security Pacific Bank building and one
can see the (vacant) Bank of America
(formerly ihe Bank of Italy) building and
one can see the (vacant) J.C. Penny's
building and one can sec the (soon-to-be
vacant) PG & E building. The "while
elephants," as Carl Larsen likes to call
them. The "huge chunks of real estate
that either can i be occupied or are toe
large to occupy." as Carl Larsen also
likes to call them. "I'm the only positive
person about downtown," Carl Larser.
said then.
storefronts; to repair those crumbling
"white elephants," to, as Carl Larsen also
suggested in a story in the Fall 1988
issue of Downtown Association News,
replace ihe "missing O" in the Hotel
Fresno sign, is lo alleviate consumers'
main obiection with the area
"The missing "0" on sign." reads the
capuon under a photo (also taken by Carl
Larsen) of Hotel Fresno, "and overall
delapidatcd appearance detract from our
beautiful skyline as seen from one of our
gateway boulevards. Is this the kind of
impression we want lo give our visitors?"
This is where the argument seems to
dissolve. Clearly the most notable feature
of Fresno's skyline is not that u is
delapidatcd and not that il lacks beauty
and not that it is poorly maintained, but
thai it barely exists. Except for the Del
Webb Townhouses (twcnty-lwo stones),
The biggest thing we're battling down
here is image. Under that broad title
called 'image' comes aesthetics and
security.
— Carl Larsen
This argument of blown jesiheucs has
its merits. The downtown area, in fact a
ugly, and people, by whom I mean those
with the greatest bulk of expendable
income, those living north and east of the
area, are in significant numbers refusing
to shop or visit or live there.
(This is a debate in itself. Les Kimber,
the councilman in whose district the
Fulton MalL is located, says lhai to view
his community as "poor" and "wiih few
resources" indicates a "lack of under¬
standing of the West Fresno Market," and
he has a point These are the people
almost wholly supporting the existing
shops, and each working day some
30,000 government employees inhabit
the area. Though to claim, as he does,
that there is ' an equal amount of
expendable income, that even "people
who are on welfare shop at Gottschalks
and Macy's" is lo ignore census statistics,
which show ihe citizens of downtown as
having the poorest housing, the lowest
per capita incomes, and the highest rates
of unemployment)
It follows, or so ihe aestheticians
reason, thai to clean up those vacant
the only "skyscrapers," and die term is
used so loosely as to practically lose
meaning, are die ten surviving structures
built before the Great Depression—the
Security Bank building (fifteen stories)
being ihe most visible, though even that
only from close up.
But something else is at work here.
That so many of the plans and people
continue to center, even as late as March
of this year, on image, on chipped paint
and exposed aggregate trash containers and
poor placement of balasts on street lamps
seems to suggest a self-induced fugue, an
unwillingness lo deal with what appears,
strolling down the Mall, 10 be the more
central problem, that there is practically
no reason for anyone out of walking
distance, which is lo say everyone living
out of die Central Area, to shop there.
1 here are many things one can and
cannot do on the Fulton Mall.
One can: buy a hot dog or buy a
sandwich, sit and eat it, get proselytized
by one of the daily (always Christian)
preachers, buy jcwclcry, buy shoes, give
people spare change.
One cannot buy a book, buy a record
(there is an English bias operating here,
since there is one record shop on die
Mall, the Disco-Azieca Lo Mejor-dela
Musica Mexicans), shop at a maior retail
outiel (Gottschalks has left, J.C. Penny's
has left Woolworths has left, Berkeley's
has left), or—and this loo runs contrary
to Victor Gruen s romantic vision—shop
or eat or sil in relative safety anywhere on
the Mall alter 5:30 p.m., when u shuts
down.
These would seem to be the major
shortcomings, and would seem to indicate
to those involved wiih the Mall's future
renovauon that image may noi be the
central problem, lhai a Mall which has al
least 25 of its sixty or so stores selling
nothing but shoes and jewelcry may have
difficulties attracting a wide base of
customers. But solutions have tended to
come slowly here, and to have consisted
more of reactions than actions—which
may not be surprising in a city where
traffic signal synchronization is seen not
as requisite but as a future innovation.
Thai this revelation has not occurred,
or has occurred to slowly, in those tight
circles of task forces and planning
divisions-and city council chambers is the
axe which many of the merchants on the
Mall seem ever insistent on grinding,
and, until recently, when decision-makers
began attending these merchants'
meetings, in silence.
It was at such a meeting that one could
expect to hear, for example, a reference to
ihe new Central Area Community Plan,
the 350-page by-product of some two
years of study by the Central Area Task
Force and the Housing and Community
Development Division, as "real exciting
but just words on paper."
The person who told me this is Peggy
Derleih, who with her husband Don owns
a flower and gift shop near the Mall's
center and who formed the Fulton Mall
Association in the Fall of 1988, and I had
already made die mistake that night, at
just such a meeting, in the coffee shop of
the Fresno Hilion, of confusing die FMA
with die DTA, and, as Peggy Derleth and
Arlin Pauler and some nineteen other
members of ihe FMA sal and waited for
mayoral candidate Karen Humphrey lo
arrive, Peggy Derleih had in no uncertain
terms corrected me. "They are two
different organizations." she had said
I told her I sensed hostility.
There was a short silence.
"There's   a   great   hosulity,"   Peggy