Central Southeast Specific Plan - Fresno, California

In collaboration with Raimi + Associates, the City of Fresno and others, Sargent Town Planning (STP) prepared the Central Southeast Area Specific Plan for a 2,200 acre area of older neighborhoods, the Kings Canyon/Historic Route 180 corridor (since renamed to Cesar Chavez Boulevard), and a range of commercial, employment and civic uses and facilities. From the 1940s onward, Fresno had expanded southward into this agricultural area as a patchwork of rural and suburban housing tracts, strip shopping centers and industrial facilities.  In recent decades the majority of new public and private investment had been focused on expansion to the north, and the Central Southeast area had suffered from steady disinvestment and decline.

Through an extensive process of community engagement it became very clear that residents want safer, more beautiful streets and parks, better code enforcement to maintain and improve housing, more commercial and civic amenties, more local jobs, and more attractive and useful places for family activities within a comfortable, safe walk or bike ride of most residents. It became clear that such improvements would leverage the value of the new bus rapid transit (BRT) line running to Downtown via Cesar Chavez Boulevard, and help attract new public and private reinvestment in the area.  The Plan sets forth a vision and strategies for implementation and coordination of these improvements, catalyzed by the coopearative actions of the City, community non-profit organizations, property owners, and residents.