Fresno Area Express

Fresno looks for help to reopen landmark

Is Fresno's unfinished city gym another money pit?

Move over, Granite Park and Fresno Metropolitan Museum. Fresno City Hall may have another publicly funded, multimillion-dollar boondoggle on its hands. More than $5 million has been spent over the past seven years to build a gymnasium in southwest Fresno that still isn't finished and has no guarantee of opening.

City of Fresno officials are seeking the help of Fresnans to reopen the historic downtown water tower that was closed because of the budget crisis.

The goal is to secure about $1,000 a month in pledges so volunteers can staff the downtown landmark's ground-level office and resume dispensing tourist information.

The distinctive city-owned tower at Fresno and O streets in the northeast corner of Eaton Plaza has been shuttered since Fresno Area Express about a month ago closed the customer office it had there.

That left no one to pay the monthly utility and maintenance bill. City Hall doesn't have the money, so the doors were locked.

Karana Hattersley-Drayton, the city's historic preservation projects manager, said it would be a shame if Fresno's best-known branding image is shuttered just as the summer tourist season begins.

"There's no other water tower like it in the United States," Hattersley-Drayton said. "It is the centerpiece of our world."

The tower's volunteers were part of the RSVP program run by HandsOn Central California, a nonprofit volunteer organization. HandsOn Executive Director Cathy Caples said the volunteers have served as many as 8,000 customers in a year.

Caples said she met with city officials on Friday to discuss fundraising ideas. She said HandsOn wants to lease the tower's office and operate it as a visitors' center and art gallery whose proceeds would help pay the utility bills.

Deputy City Manager Nicole Zieba said it doesn't make sense when the city is laying off people to spend money on a visitors' center. But, she added, the administration of Mayor Ashley Swearengin strongly supports efforts to reopen the water tower with private contributions.

"The water tower is in Fresno's blood," Zieba said. "We're confident we'll get the donations."

Zieba said the cost of reopening the tower could be much less than $1,000 a month. She said the need for donations could stop after about a year if Hands-On's art gallery is a success.

The 100-foot-tall water tower, designed by Chicago architect George W. Maher, was completed in 1894. Maher is believed to have used a larger, more ornate water tower built in Worms, Germany, in 1890 as a model.

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