The Tower District Buildings Coming Back This Fall Were All Bought With a Use in Mind

"We need to use all of it, all of the time." Brooke Payton was talking about a library. She has pushed for a Tower District branch for more than three years, and Fresno County now plans to open a temporary one inside the Ted C. Wills Community Center as soon as December.

The same idea fits most of what changed in the neighborhood this year. A bookstore, a music school, a concert room and a library branch have opened or are on the way. In each case, someone acquired or committed to a building for a specific use and then paid for the work. The district's best-known empty storefronts have mostly been left to a city enforcement pilot, and they are still empty.

A Bookstore Whose Landlord Is a Neighborhood Trust

Judging By The Cover moved to 617–619 N. Fulton St. in July. It is the first commercial tenant of the South Tower Community Land Trust. Ashley and Carlos Mireles-Guerrero started the store as a pop-up in 2023 and sold books at neighborhood events. They wanted a Tower District storefront, but rents were too high or the long-vacant spaces needed more work than a startup bookstore could pay for. So in 2024 they opened in Chinatown instead.

The Fulton building opened up for them because the land trust bought it in December 2025, its first commercial purchase, with donations as small as $5. Once renovations are finished, the trust's own offices will move into the same building. Ashley Mireles-Guerrero joined the trust's board in January.

The trust grew out of the organizing behind Broadway Parque at Broadway and Elizabeth Street, a few blocks from the bookstore. Executive director Kiel Lopez-Schmidt, an architect who grew up around the corner, got involved when the city planned to turn a demolished police substation site there into market-rate apartments.

The Severance Building Changed Hands to Stay a Stage

North of Olive, the Severance School of Dance building at Wishon and Floradora has a new owner, David Brodie, who bought it to keep it an arts space. Fresno Music Academy & Arts will move in. John Alden and Debi Ruud run the school, which ran for decades as The Voice Shop before it rebranded in 2016.

The academy now teaches at two locations, on Wishon near the Tower Theatre and in north Fresno at Cedar and Nees. It also runs The ViSTA Theatre and the Arts Annex Gallery. The Severance move brings the school under one roof. The mirrored rehearsal rooms on the ground floor will become teaching rooms for its 450 to 500 students. In July, Ruud said that work would take a few months.

The upstairs ballroom has no set use yet. At a community meeting in the building on July 7, the dozens of ideas mostly centered on an affordable, accessible venue, along with textiles classes, African drumming, Rogue Festival performances and Fresno Folklore Society concerts. Ruud said the ideas would be posted online and revised over time. If the ballroom becomes a Rogue venue or a folk concert room, neighbors will have helped decide that.

What It Costs to Do It Without a Partner

The Belmont, at 741 E. Belmont Ave. near Yosemite, shows the same model with a family paying for it alone. Christian Honetschlager and Natalie Jahanbani opened it as an event space and have hosted a couple dozen bands in its first year and change.

Fresnoland reported the costs in September. The couple has put more than $300,000 into the property, counting the purchase price and about $70,000 in HVAC and ceiling upgrades, and they took out a loan against their home to do it. Indoor sprinklers alone would cost about $85,000 by Honetschlager's estimate.

They are now looking for a tenant that is open to the public, such as a barber shop or tattoo studio, at $1.10 per square foot for the whole building or $1.25 for the large front room. "We're at a point where we can't do it alone," Honetschlager told Fresnoland. Their longer-term plan is a co-op café by day with "beer, wine and entertainment" at night. Until a tenant signs, the shows continue.

The Storefronts Still Waiting on City Hall

The city's other approach to Tower vacancies has been enforcement. Its one-year Vacant Business Ordinance pilot ended by summer 2026. According to Fresnoland, as of June 5 only one property had been fined, the Fern Avenue property at Maroa next to Livingstone's and Strummer's. That property has been partly vacant for nearly 30 years, and the $1,000 citation was paid on Feb. 20. The owner's family told Fresnoland it wants to rent the property and is trying to bring in a contractor.

Steve Wilburn, a Tower Neighborhood Association board member, had a signed letter of intent from the owner of the former Cafe Midi building on Fern Street. That space was a bohemian hangout and may have been Fresno's first coffee shop, and it has been vacant since the 1970s. He told the Fresno Bee that by about the seventh month of the pilot, he had begun to doubt the project would happen.

In August, the association and several community partners launched Vibrant Not Vacant. The campaign asks for a stronger program that measures success by whether spaces reopen, "not just secured doors, cut weeds, or avoided fines." Councilmember Annalisa Perea said she hoped to bring a revived, more aggressive pilot to the council by the end of September. Neither the Sept. 3 nor the Sept. 17 council meeting included that item, and it is not on the final agenda for Oct. 8.

Some businesses have also closed. Gil Chase's Flower Shop at 1446 N. Van Ness Ave., at Floradora, had closed by early June. The shop had been on that corner since 1971, and Michael Henry Tipton-Butler, its fourth owner, ran it for 20 years.

A Library That Follows the Same Pattern

The library is the clearest example of this pattern. Residents campaigned for it, and both governments committed money. In June, Perea moved to set aside $50,000 in the city budget toward a Tower library. Fresno County then committed $325,000 for equipment and tenant improvements at Ted C. Wills, money already covered in its newly approved $5.5 billion budget.

Supervisor Luis Chavez said a formal announcement will come in late October, and the branch should open six to eight weeks later. He called it a possible "Christmas gift" for the community. Right now, Tower residents drive at least three miles to reach a branch. Chavez said strong use of the temporary site would help the case for a larger permanent one. The December opening is a target, not a confirmed date.

October and November on the Calendar

The Tower Theatre on Olive Avenue is also getting work. On Aug. 27, the city council approved an extra $21,649 and 16 workdays for fire-alarm changes at the theater, with Cosco Fire Protection as contractor. The fall schedule is listed below.

LitHop's own site gives the hours used above. The Fresno Arts Council calendar lists the festival from noon to 6 p.m. The Tower District Business Association runs the Pooch Parade and presents the Candy Crawl with the Tower Theatre and Tower Blendz.

For dinner before a show, Aromas at Olive and Echo now serves dinner on Friday and Saturday nights. Owner Maria Gonzales added the service after customers asked for it, ABC30 reported. Judging By The Cover on Fulton and The Belmont on Belmont Avenue are both a short trip south of the theater.

At Iron Key Real Estate, we follow the buildings that change hands in neighborhoods like the Tower District, from a land trust purchase on Fulton to the sale of a century-old dance hall. If you own an older Tower property and want to know what reopening it or selling it would involve, contact us and we'll go through the details with you.