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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
Object Description
Title | 1989_03 The Daily Collegian March 1989 |
Alternative Title | Daily Collegian (California State University, Fresno) |
Publisher | Associated Students of Fresno State, Fresno, Calif. |
Publication Date | 1989 |
Description | Daily (except weedends) during the school year. Microfilm. Palo Alto, Calif.: BMI Library Microfilms, 1986- microfilm reels; 35 mm. Vol.1, no.1 (Feb 8, 1922)- |
Subject | California State University, Fresno -- Periodicals. |
Contributors | Associated Students of Fresno State. |
Coverage | Vol.1 no.1 (Feb 8, 1922)- to present |
Format | Microfilm reels, 35 mm. |
Technical Information | Scanned at 600 dpi; TIFF; Microfilm ScanPro 2000 "E-image data" |
Language | eng |
Description
Title | March 1, 1989, Page 10 |
Alternative Title | Daily Collegian (California State University, Fresno) |
Publisher | Associated Students of Fresno State, Fresno, Calif. |
Publication Date | 1989 |
Description | Daily (except weedends) during the school year. Microfilm. Palo Alto, Calif.: BMI Library Microfilms, 1986- microfilm reels; 35 mm. Vol.1, no.1 (Feb 8, 1922)- |
Subject | California State University, Fresno -- Periodicals. |
Contributors | Associated Students of Fresno State. |
Coverage | Vol.1 no.1 (Feb 8, 1922)- to present |
Format | Microfilm reels, 35 mm. |
Technical Information | Scanned at 600 dpi; TIFF; Microfilm ScanPro 2000 "E-image data" |
Language | eng |
Full-Text-Search | 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 |