FRESNO, Calif. \u2014 A long-running legal fight between the City of Fresno and a longtime local business owner has taken a dramatic turn following a fire at the building. <\/p>\n
The legal battle centers on the city\u2019s effort to acquire property for a major railroad crossing improvement project at the intersection. <\/p>\n
According to the city, it acquired the A&T Ceramics property through eminent domain last year in March and has since taken ownership of the building. <\/p>\n
The city since then has taken ownership of the building.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the business owner is standing his ground, leaving all of his things inside, and fighting for what he says has been his for 40 years.<\/p>\n
Neither side is backing down.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a major priority for the mayor and the city council,\u201d Fresno City Attorney Andrez Janz said. \u201cHundreds of millions of dollars to redo this intersection and we’re not going to let one property owner get in the way of a project that’s going to benefit the public immensely.\u201d<\/p>\n
About The Blaze: <\/p>\n
The latest fire that took place on Friday marks the third fire near the intersection in recent weeks.<\/p>\n
On January 28, the former Carl\u2019s Jr. on the northwest corner caught fire. <\/p>\n
About a week later, the Star Products building to the southeast also burned.<\/p>\n
Earlier this week, crews demolished that damaged structure.<\/p>\n
Now, investigators say Friday\u2019s fire at A&T Ceramics was intentionally set but it remains under investigation. <\/p>\n
Officials say the building was filled with large amounts of tile material.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe do have suspects in mind, but the investigation is going to be ongoing,\u201d said Fresno City Attorney Andrew Janz. \u201cI want to be absolutely clear to your audience that this was a fire that was intentionally set by somebody.\u201d<\/p>\n
On-Going Legal Battle: <\/p>\n
Janz explains the latest details in the on-going legal dispute. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe city has set aside $1.5 million to move all of this gentleman’s property to a safe and secure location and we’ve been trying to move his property for almost a year now and he’s impeded every attempt by the city,” he said. <\/p>\n
FOX26 News tried to track down the business owner, Art Terzian to get his side of the story.<\/p>\n
We were unable to reach him.<\/p>\n
However, we did find a Fresno City Council meeting from April of 2024 where he spoke publicly about it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not against the project,\u201d Terzian told councilmembers at the time.<\/p>\n
At that meeting, he proposed alternative solutions, including dedicating a portion of the sidewalk or selling part of his frontage to the city while retaining ownership of the rest of the property.<\/p>\n
Terzian also said that the cost and logistics of relocating his business would be nearly impossible. <\/p>\n
He added that similar industrial properties in the area are hard to find and come with a hefty price tag, noting that even a small, 5,000-square-foot warehouse with limited land can cost around $700,000.<\/p>\n
By comparison, he says he needs between 28,000 and 30,000 square feet to keep his business running.<\/p>\n
According to Janz, the city has done everything it can to work with Terzian to move his things out of the building. <\/p>\n
He made it clear that if something was to happen to them, it’s going to be on Terzian and not the city.<\/p>\n
Janz says there is a lot of property at the site. <\/p>\n
They got an estimate from professional movers who say it could take four to six months to clear it out.<\/p>\n
But so far, no agreement has been reached with the business owner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FRESNO, Calif. \u2014 A long-running legal fight between the City of Fresno and a longtime local business owner…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":177596,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[112,114,113],"class_list":{"0":"post-177595","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fresno","8":"tag-fresno","9":"tag-fresno-headlines","10":"tag-fresno-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177595"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177595\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/177596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}