Steve Wilburn felt a perfect confluence of events when the city announced a pilot program targeting empty buildings in Fresno’s Tower District last year.
“I thought: Oh, man! This is my lucky day,” says Wilburn, a tech worker-turned-entrepreneur and board member with the Tower Neighborhood Association. “We’re sort of all aligned in making this thing work.”
By “this thing,” he means the activation of empty and unused spaces within his neighborhood, including his own designs on one of the area’s prime empty locations.
But a full year later, Wilburn’s project seems to be at a standstill and he’s questioning the effectiveness of the city’s Vacant Business Ordinance pilot program.
He’s not alone.
Earlier this month, the Tower Neighborhood Association and several community partners launched Vibrant Not Vacant, a campaign that rethinks how the ordinance is implemented moving forward. According to its website, the campaign wants a “strengthened program that measures success by reactivation, not just secured doors, cut weeds, or avoided fines.” It is also looking for meaningful timelines, accountability and “support for bringing spaces back to life.”
Much of the campaign comes from Wilburn’s journey to understand the pilot program and how it works.
“What I found was, it didn’t really,” he says.
Will Cafe Midi spot ever have new life?
Wilburn had plans for one of the Tower District’s most notorious empty spaces; the Cafe Midi building on Fern Street. The space, a Bohemian hangout and what may have been Fresno’s first coffee shop, has been vacant since the 1970s. But Wilburn found the building’s owner and got a signed letter of intent on his idea.
The timing felt auspicious.
“It was about month seven,” he says, “when I began to question whether it was going to happen.”
Boarded-up businesses are seen along Fern Avenue at the intersection with Maroa Avenue in the Tower District, photographed Thursday, Aug. 6, 2026 in Fresno. ERIC PAUL ZAMORA ezamora@fresnobee.com
A Public Records Act request filed by Wilburn showed just more than 50 buildings were evaluated for the program. Nine were ultimately included. As of June 5, only one (the Cafe Midi building) had been cited under the ordinance. That number may now stand at two or three. But “the fine wasn’t about vacancy,” Wilburn says, and it did nothing to help him get into the space.
Section 2.2 of the ordinance gives building owners 120 days to make a property ready for occupancy. But the Fresno City Attorney’s Office, which oversees code enforcement, can ultimately determine a building is within compliance if the owner is actively seeking a permit to do work on it, working to sell it, or if it otherwise is determined to be not an abandoned structure, according to the ordinance.
“The mismatch is in urgency,” Wilburn says.
“These places are vacant decades. So, we’re well past the 120 days.”
Show of force from Tower community?
Right now, the campaign is gathering signatures on a petition to show support for the cause. It got hundreds in its first day off of one social media post, Wilburn says. But he’s hoping for a show of force too large to be ignored; something to show that “the will of the community exists to make the program do what it was meant to do.”
At the same time, the organization is crafting its vision for a new ordinance by looking at what’s been done in cities like San Francisco. At some point, Wilburn says, the campaign will become more proactive, such as pop-up events to show the community (not to mention possible building and businesses owners) the potential being squandered. Maybe one of the buildings becomes a temporary library space for the Tower.
The Chicken Pie Shop location on Olive Avenue remains closed, photographed in the Tower District Thursday, June 4, 2026 in Fresno. ERIC PAUL ZAMORA ezamora@fresnobee.com
Councilmember Annalisa Pera was happy to see the community campaign pop up. She says it falls well in line with the initial purpose of the city’s program, which was to test out policies to see what worked and what didn’t.
The goal here is vibrancy.
“We want these buildings to be filled,” she says.
“There are definitely some areas where we missed the mark.”
A more aggressive plan from city coming?
But there were successes, too.
Many buildings now have signage warning off trespassers. It may seem like a small thing, but it has made it easier for code enforcement and police to deal with nuisance issues in real time, says Perea, whose District 1 includes the Tower neighborhood.
“We definitely caught the attention of negligent building owners,” she says.
She understands the frustration in dealing with the apathy from some building owners.
There are businesses that can’t take advantage of the city’s Façade Improvement Grant Program, for example, because they can’t get the sign-off from their landlords. “That’s literally free money,” she says. She’s heard from other businesses that are afraid to ask landlords for building improvements because they fear rent increases.
Perea says she will meet with the Vibrant Not Vacant organizers in the next few weeks and is hoping to get a revived, and more aggressive, pilot program before the city council by the end of September. “The area deserves one more testing out of these policies,” she says.
“We want to make sure they have a voice. This is an all-hands-on-deck situation.”
A closed business, one of three along Fern Avenue in the Tower District, photographed Thursday, Aug. 6, 2026 in Fresno. ERIC PAUL ZAMORA ezamora@fresnobee.com 
A locked business at 1331 Wishon in the Tower District, is seen Thursday, Aug. 6, 2026 in Fresno. ERIC PAUL ZAMORA ezamora@fresnobee.com 
A locked business at 1331 Wishon in the Tower District, is seen Thursday, Aug. 6, 2026 in Fresno. ERIC PAUL ZAMORA ezamora@fresnobee.com 
The former site of The Brass Unicorn, left, is seen closed and boarded with other businesses along Fern Street in the Tower District, photographed Thursday, Aug. 6, 2026 in Fresno. ERIC PAUL ZAMORA ezamora@fresnobee.com
This story was originally published August 12, 2026 at 5:30 AM.
The Fresno Bee
Joshua Tehee covers breaking news for The Fresno Bee, writing on a wide range of topics from police, politics and weather, to arts and entertainment in the Central Valley.