What’s at stake?
This decision will mark one of the first over land use in south central Fresno since the Fresno City Council voted down the South Central Specific Plan — the document intended to broker a compromise that balances industrial interests with environmental protections for residents. In its absence, one councilmember laments these one-off debates will continue for the foreseeable future.
Residents of south Fresno and environmental advocates are urging the Fresno City Council to reject a project that would relocate an industrial facility closer to an elementary school.
If that sounds like a familiar story, that’s because it is.
This is only the latest in a decades-long fight over land use in the south central part of Fresno.
These battles regularly pit the city’s industrial and business interests against environmental activists and residents fighting against the detrimental health impacts of heavy industry in their neighborhoods.
This latest struggle marks the first debate over land use in south central Fresno since the council voted down a compromise that was supposed to have mostly settled these debates: the South Central Specific Plan.
The current fight centers on a project proposed by Crown Enterprises. The company, which didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment, is looking to relocate its Central Transport trucking operation from the corner of Church and Cherry Avenues two miles south and develop a larger facility between North and Central Avenues.
Proponents, including the INVEST Fresno coalition, say the project is “exactly the kind of investment Fresno should prioritize,” with its promise of new jobs and additional tax revenue.
But the relocation will also move the facility closer to Orange Center Elementary School and its roughly 250 students. That raises concerns for parents like Sandra Arreola, who says she’s already too apprehensive about truck traffic in the area and poor pedestrian infrastructure to let her children walk to school.
City staff estimate the Central Transport relocation would result in about 84 truck trips a day.
“If this new project were to move in right next to the kids’ school,” Arreola said, “then that traffic would only get significantly worse.”
These opposing forces are clashing yet again in the lead-up to a city council meeting Oct. 30, where councilmembers are supposed to decide whether to approve the project after multiple delays to the item.
This has also left some lamenting the fate of the South Central Specific Plan. The yearslong effort at brokering a compromise land use plan, balancing industrial interests with environmental protections for residents from heavy-polluting industries, was thrown out by the council last December.
Folks from all three camps — residents, business advocates and environmental activists — encouraged the council to vote against it, saying it didn’t go far enough.
“Both sides walked away from that compromise document,” said Councilmember Miguel Arias, who represents the southwest part of Fresno. “And now we’re having to consider these as standalone items.”
Orange Center Elementary School parents are concerned a trucking facility may relocate closer to their children’s school, already located in a part of the city with a concentration of industrial activity. Julianna Morano | Fresnoland
What happened to the South Central Specific Plan?
In addition to Fresno’s General Plan laying out land use for the entire city, “specific plans” serve as land use road maps for particular neighborhoods.
Other examples of neighborhoods with specific plans either on the books or in the works include southwest Fresno, the Tower District and the neighborhoods west of the 99.
The draft version of a specific plan for the south central area, brought before the council last December, came after five years of efforts toward a compromise.
But business advocates criticized the plan, which reduced industrial land use by 17%, for making Fresno less competitive in terms of attracting economic investments. Residents and environmental advocates, on the other hand, slammed the plan for failing to create adequate buffers between industrial facilities and sensitive sites like homes and schools.
Ultimately, the council voted 6-0 against that draft of the specific plan, sending city staff back to the drawing board. Multiple councilmembers said they hoped to see staff return with a more “business-friendly” version.
It’s now been 10 months since that decision was made, and the city has no update on the plan, city spokesperson Sontaya Rose said in an email Sept. 18.
In addition, the city council has yet to form an ad hoc committee to work toward a new draft of the plan — despite the council’s stated intention to do so at their December 2024 meeting.
“To the very best of my knowledge, there has been no initiative taken to form a committee,” said Council President Mike Karbassi in a text message Sept. 18, “and I am unaware of any meetings on this subject since it was last discussed publicly.”
Karbassi didn’t provide a reason as to why this committee hasn’t yet been formed.
Arias said it’s a shame that each of these land use decisions in the south central area will remain one-off debates for the time being, absent a new neighborhood-specific plan to guide land use.
“The specific plan was not designed to solve all problems,” he said. “It was designed to force, essentially, a compromise — to facilitate a compromise on what should occur where, and how it should be mitigated.
“Now that people are having to lie in the bed that they made,” he added, “both sides are complaining that it’s the city’s fault.”
Leadership Counsel for Justice & Accountability, the environmental justice nonprofit organizing residents in south central Fresno, was one of the organizations that urged the council to vote down the specific plan late last year.
The organization doubled down on their advocacy in a statement Oct. 9.
“We don’t view this as a choice between a specific plan and individual projects,” said staff attorney Seth Alston. “Residents are opposed to this proposal for the same reason they rejected the draft SCSP: the City is not doing enough to protect their communities from intensifying industrial development.”
Leadership Counsel is pushing for the city to hold off on approving this Central Transport proposal and any future project in the plan area until a new South Central Specific Plan is adopted.
The city council’s hearing on the project was delayed from the Oct. 16 council meeting to the Oct. 30 meeting.
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