Fulton Street Reopening in downtown Fresno

[Max Rockatansky]

While researching the timeline of shifts of US 99 in from 1926 to 1964 in Fresno I stumbled onto a city project to reopen Fulton Street in downtown.  Apparently the downtown section of Fulton Street was converted into a sidewalk mall 53 years ago and basically it ended up getting run down.  Traffic is slated to reopen through down on Fulton Street in downtown Fresno coming up on October the 21st:

https://www.facebook.com/events/1742448135784380/

Apparently there is car cruise and all sorts of events going on.  I thought it was kind of cool for what it was, not every day a city the size of Fresno restores a street.  Below is the link to the Fulton Street Project and the Fresno Bee article from when it broke ground last year:

https://www.fresno.gov/publicworks/infrastructure-construction-design/fulton-street-reconstruction-project/

http://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/article63847102.html


And if anyone is curious I am going to hunting down old US 99 alignments in Fresno coming up here pretty soon.  I'll probably be doing SSR 180 and SSR 41 as well since I just did a whole thing on SSR 168 up on Shaw Avenue a couple weeks back.

[TheStranger]

This reminds me a lot of when K Street in downtown Sacramento between 7th Street (where the Downtown Plaza mall and Golden 1 Center arena are) and 13th Street was converted back to functioning through road about 5 years ago, after having spent decades as a pedestrian and light-rail mall that declined precipitously over time.  (I used to work at K and 12th)

[Max Rockatansky]

This reminds me a lot of when K Street in downtown Sacramento between 7th Street (where the Downtown Plaza mall and Golden 1 Center arena are) and 13th Street was converted back to functioning through road about 5 years ago, after having spent decades as a pedestrian and light-rail mall that declined precipitously over time.  (I used to work at K and 12th)

It seems like a lot of cities are converting older streets back into something viable these days given the decline of retail outlets.  What's interesting about Fresno in particular is that the whole street grid has been butchered up over the years, especially after 99 became a full freeway in 1964.  You can't even drive the original alignment of US 99 on Broadway or Cherry any long in the city due to road gaps.  There is even a stadium that section off a portion of Broadway and at least one additional high rise that I know of.

[Max Rockatansky]

Fulton Street is set to fully reopen in two more weeks.  I took a stroll on it this morning in downtown, parts of it are already reopened to traffic:

https://www.flickr.com/gp/151828809@N08/C24795

Edit:  Posted the accompanying road blog.

http://surewhynotnow.blogspot.com/2017/10/fulton-street-in-fresno-reconstruction.html

[Plutonic Panda]

Looking good! Thank you for the pictures!

Do those street blades on that stop sign light up? I've always thought it would be cool to have stop signs in high traffic areas have backlights.

[Max Rockatansky]

Looking good! Thank you for the pictures!

Do those street blades on that stop sign light up? I've always thought it would be cool to have stop signs in high traffic areas have backlights.

I don't believe so looking at them more closely.  They do have a strange forest green color which I think will reflect the ambient city street lights.  There is definitely copious amounts of lighting in those art displays and streams that are on the side walks along with the additional street lamps.  I'm not sure how long I'll stay on the 21st, but I'm hoping to see how the lighting looks at night.

[Max Rockatansky]

I was sent this video of when Fulton Street was converted to the Fulton Mall.  I only had a chance to watch a couple minutes but it was pure 1960s public works cheese:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/135390136482816/permalink/682609175094240/

[Max Rockatansky]

I never really got around to taking photos of Fulton Street since it reopened this past year.  I was testing out a new camera yesterday so I drove through Fulton Street from Venture north to Divisadero Street.  Suffice to say despite some early vandalism the reopened Fulton Street turned out pretty nice:

https://flic.kr/s/aHsmBeBSP2