The call came in just after 4 a.m. on what would turn out to be a triple-digit midsummer Central Valley morning last June. In a neglected neighborhood adjacent to downtown Bakersfield, flames and smoke rose high above the city skyline, captured by overnight news crews as first responders in constant motion attempted to combat an out-of-control blaze that took down a Central California landmark.
Firefighters did their best to save the important piece of the city’s history. By dawn, all that was left was a burned-out shell of what was once one of Bakersfield’s most recognizable buildings.
The 7Up bottling plant was a spectacular 20th-century specimen unlike any other, a rare art deco survivor from the late 1930s. Its revolving neon sign often signaled to the valley’s prodigal returnees that they were home once more. Even in repose, the hollowed-out plant had anchored the corridor just east of downtown known as Old Town Kern.
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An exterior view of the 7Up bottling plant in Bakersfield, Calif., on Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2025.
Charles Russo/SFGATE
The two-alarm blaze was an all-too-familiar sight. Fire after fire, one by one, the landmarks here are disappearing.
“Bakersfield has a lot of very historic buildings and, unfortunately, over the last several years we’ve seen a lot of those catch fire,” Chris Borden, a battalion chief at the Bakersfield Fire Department who heads the arson division and its four full-time investigators, told SFGATE. “It bothers me both professionally and personally. We work very hard to try to protect those buildings.”
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Not all structures taken out are beloved, but every single one lost is emblematic of more serious, systemic problems, fire officials said.
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On April 14, a warehouse fire sent up a stack of toxic black smoke that could be seen throughout town, at least the third recent fire at that warehouse. It was an apparent case of absentee ownership and a risky, unattended structure burning out of control for all to see in the heart of the city.
Firefighters arrive at a structure fire in Bakersfield, Calif.
Courtesy of Bakersfield Fire Department
Local architect Daniel Cater, who specializes in downtown development and redevelopment projects, recognizes the precariousness here that manifests in an irreversible event happening nearly every week.
While he said there are many factors going on at once that lead to the fires in the urban core, he’s observed that landlords who aren’t present or active on their properties is one common thread: “It’s a lot easier to be an absentee landlord rather than a present landlord,” he said. “… The city council, in my observation, has taken a more active approach — identification of who ownership is — creating minimum standards so hazards are prevented.”
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Another contributing factor, according to both city and fire officials, is the city’s unhoused population, which has been a growing problem in the city’s downtown core over the past two decades even as recent numbers start to show improvement. According to the county’s 2025 point in time count report, the unsheltered population in the metro Bakersfield region decreased by 10% from 2024. The number of unsheltered individuals here, however, is still 1,185.
Whatever the root cause, statistics reveal just how prolific the fires in Bakersfield are. In 2024, there were 582 fires in residential buildings and an additional 534 fires in commercial or public buildings, contributing to 5,115 total fires for the year, out of 48,732 responses to calls in that timeframe. “I would say the number is the same or increased for 2025,” Bakersfield Fire Department battalion chief and spokesperson Alexander Clark told SFGATE.
In its 2025 annual report, the arson unit investigated 433 incidents, BFD said. “The unit made 28 arrests, responded to 2 fatal incidents, and documented 10 burn injuries,” the report stated.
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Borden said tracking the data over the past several years shows these types of incidents “became a reality, almost a daily reality, in the arson unit here,” he explained.
Fire department officials also believe that making that data-driven connection between the city’s unhoused residents in its urban core and fires will eventually enable them and the city to calibrate the services needed. This, in turn, will ultimately impact, and hopefully decrease, the number of fires in the downtown corridor.
Bakersfield Fire Department battalion chief and spokesperson Alexander Clark told SFGATE that members of the unhoused population are often taken off the street, put in jail for a few days, and then released back on the street “without the support [that] was needed.”
Charles Russo/SFGATE
More importantly, it will inform policy to get individuals the help they need.
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“We can better track how much call volume is associated with the homeless population,” Bakersfield Fire battalion chief Clark told SFGATE. “If we do have a fire that’s arson-related, what percentage of that population is starting those fires?”
Clark recognizes a pressing need for increased services for the unhoused. “Our homeless have mental health problems, and a lot of it is related to drug use,” he said, noting that members of the unhoused population are often taken off the street, put in jail for a few days, and then released back on the street “without the support [that] was needed.”
A “focus on the mental health side” he said, could potentially lead to a “homeless decrease and a decrease in arson or accidental fires.”
Firefighters arrive at a structure fire in Bakersfield, Calif.
Courtesy of Bakersfield Fire Department
While other cities’ fire departments, like LA, focus the vast majority of their time and resources providing emergency medical services, Clark said that actually going out and fighting blazes is a nonstop occurrence for the just over 200 full-time firefighters in Bakersfield.
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“All the firefighters are working as hard as they can, working more calls than ever, more fires than we’ve ever had,” he said. “Especially when summertime hits, we’ll have more calls. We’re trying as a department to reduce the number of fires, yet we’re still struggling.”
The struggle often comes in multiple incidents at certain landmarks, full of historic character and charm, that are in grave jeopardy.
One example is the abandoned La Mirage Motel, a two-story midcentury marvel of a building that is slated to be demolished, if it doesn’t burn to the ground first. There have been approximately 23 fires over the past year alone at that single structure on Union Avenue, a main thoroughfare that was once a buzzy hub for dining and shopping and bisected the town north to south. Many of the fires now occur on or around Union.
“My in-laws stayed on Union Avenue during their honeymoon,” Clark said. “It’s hard to see areas like that that have gone down so much.”
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Arson division battalion chief Borden, a 26-year veteran of BFD, also said an increase in monitoring and services is a possible way through, especially when it comes to aiding the city’s unhoused residents: “We can provide the services they need, get them housed and off the streets — then see if those numbers go down,” Borden said.
City leaders acknowledge this struggle, and say they’re trying to act quickly to provide resources to both the unhoused population here as well as the fire department.
It’s an issue, some feel, that’s reached a breaking point. “There is a sense of urgency, because over the last several years we’ve seen far too many buildings lay vacant for far too long,” Bakersfield City Councilmember Andrae Gonzales told SFGATE. “As a result of that, as a result of property owners not taking care of their properties, there are break-ins, steady decline and decay. There are also structure fires, most of them arson.”
A view east in downtown Bakersfield, Calif., toward the Sierra Nevada in the distance, on Wednesday, Nov. 12, 2025.
Charles Russo/SFGATE
Gonzales is in a unique position to tell the story of what is and isn’t possible in Bakersfield’s core. He represents Ward 2, which is the downtown and east Bakersfield corridor.
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Because Gonzales serves a district that doesn’t have the resources or tax base of newer wards, it is perhaps the most difficult district to navigate politically in the giant, sprawling city. Residents, he admits, have both the highest hopes and the lowest expectations for it.
When Gonzales was elected a decade ago, he walked his district block by block and vowed to not just preserve it, but to turn it into something new and viable, he said. He wanted systemic change that wouldn’t simply seek to gentrify and push out current occupants, but finally weave the city core’s character, charm, history and even shortcomings into its fabric. And that started with taking stock of what was already there and had been overlooked for decades.
Ruined storefronts following an earthquake in Bakersfield, Calif., August 1952.
FPG/Getty Images
“There’s been a long history of Bakersfield losing our unique buildings and beautiful architecture,” he explained. “The 1952 earthquake was a complete tragedy in this regard. A lot of our buildings were completely destroyed. I grew up hearing stories of the loss, my parents who lived through that.”
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Standing among the ashes of historic buildings that are lost forever, however, are some that have been saved.
There’s the Woolworth’s building, an ambitious multi-year restoration project that set out to restore and refresh the nation’s last standing Woolworth’s building and lunch counter. It also reimagined the space to become a multi-use enterprise, complete with a concert venue, the lunch counter, a coffee stand, a retail space and office space. Most notably, it has brought an entire city block back to life.
From its opening block party extravaganza last October to lines out the door for coffee and lunch today, it has, even in its infancy, created a pedestrian-friendly narrative for downtown.
Customers dine outside of the newly refurbished Woolworth’s building in Bakersfield, Calif., on Wednesday, Nov. 12, 2025.
Charles Russo/SFGATE
But even the miracle that is Woolworth’s revitalization was threatened by an early morning second-floor fire that broke out in April 2024, right in the middle of the massive overhaul. Last fall, the building’s co-owners, Sherod and Emily Waite, recalled for SFGATE the moments following receiving the phone call that the building was ablaze.
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“Oh my gosh, we were at home, we just bolted over here … the owner across the street called us, so he was giving the play by play,” Sherod explained while standing on the lunchroom floor during a busy midday rush at Woolworth’s. “‘There’s another fire engine pulling up. Oh, there’s smoke coming out. There’s flames coming out the window.’ So we — before we pulled up, I thought this thing would be all in flames.”
“And it’s over,” Emily said.
The Waites got lucky. Firefighters responded quickly, and the fire was extinguished with minimal damage. Once the fire was out, an investigation was initiated and it was determined that no structural damage had occurred and the Waites were able to resume work on Woolworth’s almost immediately.
Emily and Sherod Waite, owners of the Woolworth’s building, pictured on Wednesday, Nov. 12, 2025, in downtown Bakersfield, Calif.
Charles Russo/SFGATE
That outcome is also a good thing for Gonzales, currently a candidate for state Assembly. He runs a campaign that relies heavily on the story of turnaround in his district. Despite the setbacks, he said, people are returning to downtown in droves, and it’s slowly becoming the place to be again. This all seemed like an impossibility on election night in November 2016.
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“When I first got elected, I had a list of maybe 100 different projects and initiatives I wanted to take on,” he said. “This matrix of priorities and various different neighborhoods. We’ve accomplished a lot of them, but still there’s a lot to do. That’s the important lesson when it comes to the revitalizing of our urban core, it’s not just one person, but a lot of people. The success of downtown — any project — [takes] hundreds and hundreds of people who’ve invested time and energy and creativity.”
Graphic designer Shannon LaBare is one of those people. Raised in Riverside County, a little more than a decade ago, she accompanied her husband on a pilgrimage back to his hometown, Bakersfield, and saw what many see when they first arrive: a blank slate filled with possibility.
She wanted to be a part of the change but didn’t know where to start, so she started to network. Soon, she was sharing office space with Austin and Anna Smith, who had moved to Bakersfield from San Francisco to start Sage Equities, an investment firm that specializes in transforming historic, neglected or sometimes demolished downtown spaces into sought-after housing developments. The other suite mate was architect Cater, who returned to his hometown with his wife after living in San Francisco and has become the go-to architect on downtown rehabilitation projects.
Architect Daniel Cater pictured outside his office in downtown Bakersfield, on Wednesday, Nov. 12, 2025.
Charles Russo/SFGATE
LaBare ended up starting a marketing firm called Purveyor Branding Co., which has its fingerprints on many of the downtown redevelopment projects. She maintains her work isn’t just about making sure there’s an attractive, consumer-friendly sheen on downtown, but to be an advocate first.
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“It really doesn’t happen if you don’t believe in or have a feeling about a space,” she told SFGATE. “We talk about this all the time.”
It’s a lot of moving parts behind the scenes, she admits. In 2019, she also helped form a nonprofit called the Hub, a neighborhood preservation and revitalization alliance. Councilmember Gonzales currently serves as executive director.
LaBare maintains that nothing can be restored or rebranded if it burns down first, so the work in Bakersfield’s most at-risk and historic neighborhoods becomes twofold: identify what needs rescuing, and then find a use for it that will not only renew the space, but be congruous with what the neighborhood and the city needs.
“The ownership can be wonky,” she said of potential landmarks that are sliding into oblivion or are extremely at-risk. “Someone owns it, we don’t know who. We can’t advocate for it. We can’t connect with them, and it falls into disrepair.”
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The work can be arduous and at the same time it’s a “race against the clock,” she admitted. She pointed to the Sumner Station train depot as the best example of a place that could either “become something great” or go right up in flames.
Pedestrians walk past Sumner Station in Bakersfield, Calif., on Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2025.
Charles Russo/SFGATE
Located east of downtown, the historic structure was built by Southern Pacific Railroad in 1889. The station famously delivered generations of immigrants, starting with Basque farmers and shepherds, to Bakersfield.
The train station had such an outsized influence in the makeup of the town that the neighborhood is still Basque-influenced, with the legendary Pyrenees Cafe across from the train station, and the Pyrenees French Bakery and Wool Growers restaurant a block and a half away.
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Sumner ceased to operate as a passenger station in 1971. Since then, like much of this part of the city, it has been ignored. The city finally stepped in in 2021 and agreed to lease the building from Union Pacific, the decommissioned station’s owner, which previously had plans to tear it down.
Though the railroad continues to own it, Bakersfield has made plans for the station’s revitalization a key component for its Old Town Kern Vision Plan released last fall. Ideas for the space include “an outpost of the Kern County museum, a food hall with local businesses and vendors, outdoor terraces and gardens, and other amenities,” the plan states.
A pedestrian walks past Narducci’s Cafe, which shuttered in 2023, in the Old Town Kern neighborhood of Bakersfield, Calif., on Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2026.
Charles Russo/SFGATE
And while the will from the city is there to save Sumner Station, there is still pushback from members of the community and even others on the city council, especially when it comes to the expense and timelines that drag out on the station’s rehab and other similar downtown projects, Gonzales said.
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“In terms of size, we’re one of the larger cities in the state; it creates lots of different enclaves and communities that are separate and apart,” he explained. “We have a city council who is doing its job and representing its respective wards. Sometimes, the value and sense of responsibility for some of our historic neighborhoods is lost among the council. That’s not a criticism, that’s a reality.”
Still, it’s not difficult to see the opportunity in and around the station and the host neighborhood. Change here, while slow, is already happening.
Rachel Wainwright opened up RAM Gallery across the tracks from Sumner Station in the spring of 2023. The former curator for the Bakersfield Museum of Art felt that there was a warehouse-sized gap in the city’s commercial art and gallery space, and searched high and low for a space that could store and showcase art.
A car drives through downtown Bakersfield, Calif., near Sumner Station, on Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2025.
Charles Russo/SFGATE
With painter and sculptor Charles Arnoldi, a friend and business partner, Wainwright found a warehouse that had been left behind. Like so many of the neighborhood’s structures, it faced a precarious daily do-or-die situation.
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“Old Town Kern is a neighborhood I’ve been passionate about conserving,” Wainwright told SFGATE from inside the gallery space. “It’s overlooked. The real estate prices are affordable here. Artists and creatives really see potential much faster. I knew I wasn’t going to have to be a tough sell.”
But three years on, the gallery, housed in a converted cinderblock building built in the 1960s, still is an anomaly in the neighborhood. “It is complicated,” Wainwright explained. “We’ve dealt with vandalism to the building. Every time we drive up, it is nerve-wracking.”
“We have thought of looking at other spaces, some with more walkability,” she said. “But what we have here in this building, we couldn’t have anywhere else in Bakersfield, let alone California. Oh my god, we have 4,000 feet of exhibition space. That’s insane. So we have to weigh pros and cons. And it’s amazing how well we’re supported by the community. Every opening is very well attended. We’re ready, and people want it to be successful.”
A detail view of the Kress Building in downtown Bakersfield, Calif., on Wednesday, Nov. 12, 2025.
Charles Russo/SFGATE
Architect Cater said spaces like RAM are the future. They’re not just about working with the greatest hits of what’s left, but taking buildings and repurposing them into something that attracts both locals and visitors. Doing that, before they have a chance to burn down, is what it’s going to take for the wholesale turnaround, he said. Seeing projects like RAM come to life has led to an unofficial mantra for him and his fellow downtown evangelists: One block at a time. One building at a time.
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One critical move for the city to make is to take inventory of what remains throughout the historic corridor, Cater added, which it will do as part of its 2045 general plan update, set to be adopted this year.
He estimated that more than 300 buildings in the downtown and east Bakersfield corridors would be highlighted as historic or significant, worthy of protection.
“It was a real step towards identifying structures that should be on the city’s watch list,” he said.
The late-day sun hits the Fox Theater in Bakersfield, Calif., on Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2025.
Charles Russo/SFGATE
“There are a lot of gestures and signs that we’re moving toward the positive,” he continued. “With the Sumner depot, for example, there is a huge will around it. But it’s also a ‘will we or won’t we’ defining moment in the community. Having buildings in downtown that made it through the earthquake, made it through an almost complete emptying out to see them back up and humming, it’s an idea that I, like many, would like to see coming through.”
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But even as things are slowly moving in the right direction, setbacks occur in the form of preventable tragedies. In early February, a pair of structure fires ravaged two buildings that used to be old storefronts in a popular section of downtown.
Bakersfield fire battalion chief Clark, a 23-year veteran of the fire department, didn’t mince words about the fires: “It’s very disheartening,” he said.
Councilmember Gonzales, as he sets his sights on Sacramento, acknowledges there is still much work to be done, including completion of his most recent effort: expansion of an ordinance that requires property owners to register their names to their buildings and also mandate installation of fire protection equipment like alarms and sprinklers on their properties.
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Cars drive past the Padre Hotel in downtown Bakersfield, Calif., on Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2025.
Charles Russo/SFGATE
He recognizes that all of these efforts, big and small, both legislative and people working together to “have a downtown that belongs to everyone,” cannot magically bring back the past or replace what has been lost. Still, he said, the day-to-day mandate to save what can still be saved is far from satisfied, even as his time serving his downtown constituents draws to an end.
“There is always something else to do,” he concluded. “Always a longer list to be created. I think if I stayed any longer, I’d double my list, but it’s very appropriate and timely for me to pass the leadership baton — time for someone else to create in their own style.”
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