What’s at stake?
The progress toward a commercial kitchen comes five years after the murder of a Fresno street vendor that served as a wakeup call for local officials to invest in resources and protections for the community of entrepreneurs.
A demolition crew ripped down a door on the side of a single-story building in central Fresno on Tuesday morning — but really, that just means a new door will soon open up for the city’s street vendors, literally and figuratively.
Tuesday launched the first phase of development for a long-awaited community kitchen for Fresno’s mobile food vendors, starting with the demolition of a property on Fresno Street where local nonprofit Cultiva La Salud plans to build up the kitchen over the next year.
“The kitchen will not only be a place where vendors will cook food and comply with environmental health regulations,” said Veva Islas, executive director of Cultiva La Salud. “It will be a location where hopes and dreams for food vendors will be brought to reality.”
This critical step toward finally building the new space for vendors to prepare and store food comes more than five years after Fresno’s street vendor community suffered a devastating loss — and city officials received a wakeup call — on the day that vendor Lorenzo Perez was shot and killed on the job.
A community kitchen was just one of several promises city officials made to vendors in the wake of Perez’s murder.
Leaders with the nonprofit acknowledged that the timeline to bring that dream to life has taken longer than anyone anticipated. But Cultiva La Salud Board President Karen Aceves said she hopes it can serve as a lesson on “how community investment works.”
“Too often, we ask small organizations to carry large responsibilities without giving them time, planning resources, systems or the staff required to succeed,” Aceves said.
“(Cultiva’s) journey shows us another way: Fund the planning. Strengthen the institution. Listen to the people closest to the work. Help build capacity,” she added, “instead of simply making demands.”
The project has a total budget of $5 million, of which Cultiva has raised $4.2 million to date, mostly through philanthropic organizations like the Vesper Society and 11th Hour Project. The City of Fresno also chipped in with a $700,000 grant.
The progress celebrated on Tuesday also comes after several setbacks for Fresno food vendors in recent years.
Some of those stem from actions at the federal level with the Trump administration’s aggressive crackdown on immigration enforcement. But other obstacles have come from the decisions of local elected officials.
The Fresno City Council has increased regulations and fines for sidewalk vendors multiple times in the past few years, despite fierce pushback from vendors and advocates.
Earlier this year, the Fresno County Board of Supervisors also killed a pilot program that would’ve allowed food entrepreneurs to legally serve customers out of their homes.
Islas, who has been a vocal critic of these city and county policies, seemed to acknowledge these ups and downs as she invited Fresno City Councilmember Miguel Arias up to the podium to speak on Tuesday.
Arias, who co-sponsored the $700,000 grant to support Cultiva’s commercial kitchen in 2024, also later co-sponsored some of the city’s policies restricting sidewalk vendors and raising fines for them.
“Miguel, I’m sorry for all of the bad things I’ve ever said to you,” Islas said on Tuesday.
“Or about me,” Arias interjected.
“Or about you,” Islas continued. “But thank you for being an angel for our community.”
Arias, whose term will end this year, said he hopes his successors on council keep up the investments in the city’s street vendors.
“We all love food vendors. We all contract them. We all buy their goods. But it’s not enough,” he said. “We need to be able to make sure they have access to a commercial kitchen.”
In his remarks, Arias also apologized for the role the city’s permit process has played in slowing down progress toward opening the kitchen.
“That’s one thing I still have not been able to fix after seven years,” he said.
As for the timeline, Islas said they’re still waiting on one more permit to get approved before they can start to build.
But as long as that comes through soon, she said she expects the kitchen to be completed anywhere from nine months to a year from now.
