Overview:
The Elm rezone would eliminate potential for approximately 3,540 housing units in southwest Fresno.
The Fresno City Council will vote today whether to defy both the Fresno Planning Commission and southwest Fresno residents by rezoning 60 acres from mixed-use back to industrial – a proposal that area residents and advocates describe as the latest assault on a community plan that’s been repeatedly undermined while other Fresno neighborhood plans remain untouched.
Industrial developers, who didn’t attend critical planning meetings in 2017, now want to delay the vote until June, when rezones in Councilmember Mike Karbassi’s district, along Herndon Avenue, could provide required replacement of the housing units that would be lost on paper in southwest Fresno.
The Fresno Planning Commission voted 3-1 last Wednesday to reject the rezone after hearing hours of testimony from southwest Fresno residents who have fought for years to reduce industrial development in their community.
“Ours is the only [neighborhood plan] that continues to get holes poked through it, even though we fought hard to get [industrial] zoning out of our community,” said Debbie Darden, a west Fresno native who serves on the District 3 Project Committee. “We hope that this does not fall on deaf ears.”
The land along Elm Avenue, Highway 41, and Annadale Avenue contains industrial buildings rezoned in 2017 under the Southwest Fresno Specific Plan, which banned new industrial expansion.
John Kinsey, a north Fresno attorney representing Buzz Oates, a real estate investment firm, Span Development LLC, and a local land trust, claimed they were never notified about the Southwest Specific Plan meetings which led up to the consequential rezones away from industrial. Fresno Planning Director Jennifer Clark contradicted Kinsey, saying that “all of the property owners within the Southwest Specific plan area were noticed for all of the meetings.”
“When I look at the entire process itself, it’s hard for me to accept the fact that during the specific Southwest plan these property owners weren’t involved in the process,” said Commission Chair Peter Vang. “I think the failure of participating in those critical discussions, you have to do some self-reflecting.”
In January 2024, the City of Fresno quietly signed an indemnification agreement with the three property owners on Elm that would shield the city from all legal costs and liabilities if they approved the controversial industrial rezoning – effectively transferring the financial risk of lawsuits from taxpayers to developers while paving the way for the council to override both the Planning Commission’s recommendation and residents’ objections.
According to planning department documents, the Elm rezone would eliminate potential for approximately 3,540 housing units in southwest Fresno. Under SB 330, the Fresno City Council must concurrently approve another rezoning to accommodate an equal number of housing units.
In a letter to Karbassi, who doesn’t represent the affected area, Kinsey requested delaying the vote until June when the city will consider another project with offsetting housing units. Approximately 4,400 units would be added through a separate rezone along Herndon Avenue in north Fresno, according to councilmember Miguel Arias, which is within Karbassi and Councilmember Nick Richardson’s districts rather than the district where Elm Avenue is located.
The Specific Plan “undermines their [the industrial operators’] ability to sell the property because now they have an inconsistent use with the zoning. The property values plummet,” Kinsey previously said. Dennis Woods, chairman of United Security Bank, confirmed this concern a few years ago to the city council: “If we lose the zoning and we lose the tenants, the [land] values will drop.”
Dr. Venise Curry, whose family has fought industrial impacts for generations and compared local infant mortality to third-world rates, explained replacing existing buildings with “housing, a community college, commercial businesses, or park space” was the plan’s central purpose, not a side effect.
If approved, this would follow 2022’s 32-acre industrial rezone in Southwest Fresno that California Attorney General Rob Bonta called “likely unlawful” yet faced no legal challenge.
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