Frustrated Chinatown Fresno businesses still hope the light at the end of the tunnel is a train

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Cuca’s, a 51-year-old Mexican restaurant in the heart of Fresno’s Chinatown, opened decades before the first spike was ever driven into the ground in the name of the state’s high-speed rail project. The family-owned business has weathered the storm for a decade since.

Margaret Sifuentes isn’t sure she can keep it up anymore.

“I just can’t hold on any longer with the street closures, with delays, with the prices of food,” Sifuentes said, sitting on one of the stools in the restaurant her grandmother Cuca passed down to her decades ago.

Sifuentes said she’s giving herself until after Christmas, when Cuca’s will hit 52 years in its Chinatown location, to decide. Closing wouldn’t spell the end for Cuca’s entirely — which has a second spot in the Tower District run by Sifuentes’ daughter — but it would be the end of a half-century-long era for Chinatown.

“I thought the fast train would be something awesome for us to have,” she added, “but within the years that it’s taken and all the mess we’ve had here in Chinatown … it’s been terrible.”

Cuca’s is far from the only business hurting from years of unkept promises to the historic Fresno neighborhood – many of which center around the high-speed rail – though several are still holding out hope it could all be worth it someday.

Originally envisioned as a boon for the overlooked heart of the state, construction delays, political battles and funding issues have put the project to connect the Central Valley to Southern California and the Bay Area a decade behind schedule.

Chinatown, no stranger to neglect from local government over the past century-and-a-half, was also supposed to finally have its day in the sun again with one entrance to Fresno’s high-speed rail station planned for the neighborhood.

Some Chinatown business owners still believe in the project’s promises for the neighborhood, even though they’ve never come on time.

“This is one of the best things that could possibly happen to Chinatown Fresno,” said Morgan Doizaki, owner of Central Fish Company. “The state’s largest project ever, happening in Chinatown Fresno.”

But the project now needs $7 billion by next summer to stay afloat. That plus a second round of scrutiny from the Trump administration leaves some business owners wondering, once again, if they’ll live to see the day it’s completed. 

Others envision a better future for the neighborhood, with or without the rail. 

“We’ll survive without it,” said Jan Minami, project director of the Chinatown Fresno Foundation, a nonprofit supporting Chinatown businesses. “We’ll get better without it.”

‘People assume all of Chinatown is closed’

It’s not just high-speed rail construction shutting down Chinatown’s roads lately, though that is a big part of it. Both Tulare Street and Cesar Chavez Boulevard (formerly Ventura) have been shut down for over six years to build underpasses beneath existing railways, plus the future high-speed rail tracks. 

Toni Tinoco, the Central Valley deputy regional director of the High Speed Rail Authority, said in an email to Fresnoland that the goal is to complete the Tulare underpass by the end of June and the Cesar Chavez one by “Fall 2025.”

But two other simultaneous projects in Chinatown have piled onto the high-speed rail construction in recent months. There’s a city project to replace water and sewer lines in downtown and Chinatown, funded by the Newsom administration’s Office of Business and Economic Development. 

There’s also the state-backed Transformative Climate Communities project to install streetlights and trees throughout Chinatown.

The city expects to complete the water and sewer projects in October and the tree and streetlight installation by the end of this year, according to recent estimates.

Paul Pearson, owner of Chinatown staple Chef Paul’s Cafe, said he doesn’t pay attention to the construction timelines from city or state officials anymore.

“I don’t listen to it because I don’t like disappointment,” said the business owner whose restaurant is going on 17 years in Chinatown this year.

Business owners like Pearson say there should have been better coordination between the simultaneous projects shutting down major thoroughfares in Chinatown – and a more nimble notification system for impacted businesses.

Doizaki, owner of 75-year-old Chinatown institution Central Fish Company, said the construction in recent months has been “destroying his business.” He compared the simultaneous projects to “an orchestra with no maestro.”

At other places, like Chinatown bookstore Judging by the Cover, owners Ashley and Carlos Mireles-Guerrero have received call after call from confused customers venturing into the maze that is Chinatown right now.

“People assume all of Chinatown is closed,” Ashley Mireles-Guerrero said.

Miguel Arias, who  represents Chinatown on the Fresno City Council, said that while he understands how disruptive the construction has been for businesses, some of it’s inevitable – and most of it will be done by the end of 2025.

“There has been significant coordination, but when you’re building the largest public infrastructure project in the country in an area that has the worst public infrastructure in the city,” he said, “the delays were expected.

“As inconvenient as they have been, they could have been much worse, and the alternative is not to do it because it was too hard.”

The other side of the construction

Judging by the Cover is one of the newer businesses in Chinatown.

The bookstore opened up in the Chinatown Fresno Foundation’s Pop-Up Place on F Street in October. Judging by the Cover won a spot in the incubator funded by a grant from the City of Fresno, covering six months of rent and utilities for selected micro-businesses.

The couple is now weighing whether to stay in the neighborhood, though being in Chinatown was part of the draw from the beginning.

“Our goal has always been to be a bookstore that is accessible to communities that don’t have bookstores,” Ashley Mireles-Guerrero said. “We probably could get way more foot traffic if we went into Tower, or if we went up north, if we were in the Fresno High area. But I don’t know – it’s a different vibe down here.”

There have also been some welcome improvements to their street in their first six months.

When the couple first moved into their space last October, it was pitch black outside on their lampless street when they locked up in the evening, forcing them to wear headlamps.

“Once we started getting streetlights, I have noticed that people come out later,” Ashley Mireles-Guerrero said, “even if it is dark.”

Others, like Sifuentes of Cuca’s, are pleased with the sidewalk improvements as well, despite the disruptions their installation has caused.

“The sidewalks look nice. The roads look nice. Our new streetlights … there’s an improvement,” she said.

But the same can’t be said for the high-speed rail, Sifuentes added.

“I’ve suffered, but for a good reason – not like the fast train. We’re suffering,” she said, “and we continue to suffer.” 

Wavering trust from Chinatown businesses

The high-speed rail project reignited conversations about revitalizing Chinatown, but that has been a moving target for the neighborhood for decades.

Some longstanding business owners say there’s still more work to do rebuilding trust between the historic neighborhood and the local and state governments after years of neglect.

The neighborhood and its many ethnic communities – not just Chinese but also Japanese, African American, Basque and Latino, to name a few – have survived destructive policies, including redlining, the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II and displacement during the construction of Highway 99.

“The city has underestimated Chinatown,” Pearson of Chef Paul’s said, calling it the “bastard stepchild” of the city. 

“Now they come wanting to adopt, and that bastard stepchild is not interested – don’t believe anything they’re saying,” he added, “even if it’s accurate.”

For Lynn Ikeda, who runs one of Chinatown’s oldest businesses, that lack of trust pushed her to take steps to safeguard her shop from the high-speed rail project. Ikeda’s grandfather opened Kogetsu-do, a Japanese bakery, almost 110 years ago, which continues to draw customers from all over California.

Ikeda was sad to see former neighborhood icons like the Cosmopolitan Tavern and Italian Grill demolished (and relocated outside Chinatown) to clear the way for the high-speed rail. She set out to make sure the same thing wouldn’t happen to her family’s property in the Lake Moon Company Building on F Street.

That included getting her building added to Fresno’s Local Register of Historic Resources.

Not all businesses along the path of construction have had to relocate, however, with some receiving support from the High-Speed Rail Authority – but on a case-by-case basis.

Arthur Moye, owner of Full Circle Brewing Company, said delivery trucks for his full-production brewery used to always come in off of Cesar Chavez Boulevard and down China Alley.

“When they cut that off” for underpass construction, he said, “there was no real way to do it.”

So the High-Speed Rail Authority covered the cost of a solution that helped ensure delivery trucks could still come to the brewery, Moye said.

“We wouldn’t be able to really do business on the production side if we didn’t have that,” he said.

This was a unique deal Full Circle hashed out with High-Speed Rail individually, Moye said. 

There doesn’t appear to be any publicly-funded program at this time specifically designed for businesses impacted by high-speed rail construction.

When asked about a broader program, Tinoco of the High-Speed Rail Authority encouraged businesses to contact either her agency or contractors to figure out how to “best mitigate their issues.”

“If a business is facing long-term impacts, they are directed to California’s Department of General Services,” she added, “and encouraged to file a government claim for eligible compensation.”

As for support programs from the city, leaders have touted two rounds of facade improvement funding that were open to downtown and Chinatown businesses to spiff up their storefronts. 

‘Pretty buildings, but empty buildings’

No matter what becomes of the high-speed rail project, there’s change on the horizon for Chinatown – and competing visions of what that should look like.

One open question is what will be done with Chinatown’s many vacant properties and buildings that have yet to be redeveloped.

In a March news conference, Mayor Jerry Dyer identified that as “one of the biggest drawbacks” for the neighborhood, saying “people have purchased buildings and not done anything with them in hopes that high-speed rail would be developed.”

Arias, the Chinatown councilmember, is also concerned with “speculative investors” who he accuses of sitting on property without investing in it further.

“The argument used to be: well, the city hasn’t invested. Now, the city, the state and the federal government are,” he said, including tens of millions from the Newsom administration that’s funding the infrastructure improvements.

Some Chinatown business owners share these concerns.

Sifuentes of Cuca’s laments the “pretty buildings, but empty buildings” in Chinatown.

“We have a lot of places that people could rent and fix up and start a business,” she said, “but they don’t do that.” 

The city has plans to convert at least one of Chinatown’s empty buildings into affordable housing, Dyer and Arias announced in March. That’s the historic Bow On Tong building on F Street, which was condemned after a devastating fire in 2022.

Arias mentioned they’re eyeing another vacant property on the same street – the Peacock building – to convert into affordable housing as well.

Not all business owners are on board with more low-income housing coming to Chinatown – or at least with affordable housing moving in exclusively without any market-rate.

“It’s gotta be mixed,” Moye of Full Circle said.

“If you go all affordable,” he added, “we’re never going to get the walk-around expendable income to patronize the businesses that come in.”

But market-rate development is where the private sector needs to step up, Arias said, not the city.

“It’s not easy,” he said. “I get the amount of capital that they need.”

But the city’s modernization of infrastructure in Chinatown has finally made the neighborhood ready for private development, he added.

“Now we need those who’ve been land-banking for decades,” Arias said, “and property owners who’ve been waiting for these improvements to be completed to now do their part.”

Private development in Chinatown

Esmeraldo “Es” Esposo is a private sector developer with ambitious plans for one of his properties in Chinatown.

That property is the historic Basque Hotel building on F Street. Esposo hopes to build between 20 and 28 housing units on the top floor of the two-story building. In the ground floor’s three commercial spaces, his niece plans to open a laundromat in one and a coffee shop in another.

For the third, he’s envisioning a kitchen for pop-up restaurants, which will go hand-in-hand with the courtyard he wants to be available for customers to eat outside and hang out.

Some of his other plans for the building – such as using limestone on the first floor to combat graffiti and deterioration of the original brick – have been met with resistance from the city, due to the fact that the Basque Hotel is on the local historic registry.

“They said, you know, it’s a brick building – keep it a brick building,” he said. “So I’m going, OK, I gotta think outside the box.”

Doizaki, owner of Central Fish, also owns several properties in addition to the one where his family business has been located for decades. 

His other properties include the Bing Kong building – which he’s owned for over two decades – as well as the “sister” Nippon buildings on Kern and F streets – which he bought in 2019 – all within a block of Central Fish.

Five years ago, Doizaki said he didn’t have the money for his plans to convert part of the two-story Nippon Building No. 2 into market-rate apartments, but he’s getting closer.

The pandemic also wiped out some of his finances for projects like this, leaving the last few years to rebuild his “war chest.”

But with the long-awaited public investments in Chinatown’s infrastructure, the time is finally approaching for those investments.

“The time is coming soon,” he said, “I can feel it.”