Neighborhood revitalization is on the upswing in a community west of Fresno State. The San Ramon Apartment--a new 32-unit apartment complex run by the Fresno Housing Authority--will be ready to lease to residents in the next couple of weeks.
The new complex is part of the changing face of the community known as El Dorado Park; it's also known to many as Sin City, a term community leaders want to do away with.
Fresno Mayor Ashley Swearengin says the San Ramon Apartments are a good start to community revitalization.
"It takes a couple of things. First of all, we need to have a willing property owner or some type of private sector partner. The city has some grant funds we can commit to restoring and rehabilitating housing units," Swearengin says.
At the apartments on the corner of E. San Bruno Avenue and N. Sixth Street, the apartment owners have already made improvements-- increasing security, improving the landscape--making the area much different than how Rosalinda Gonzales remembers it a few years ago.
"It was bad, really bad. These apartments that they've done here are beautiful, and they were just awful back then--a lot of drugs, people just fighting, gangs and everything," says Gonzales, a mother of five.
Gonzales is also a community leader who volunteers at the El Dorado Park neighborhood resource center.
She partners with others who also care about improving conditions in their neighborhood. The Associated Students, Inc. (ASI) at Fresno State is one of those partners.
"Two years ago, they [the ASI] made it a priority to help the community grow and change because they're concerned with the safety," says Ashleigh Rocker, Fresno State's ASI programs and volunteer coordinator.
In 2012, Fresno was one of four cities in the U.S. to receive a federal grant for projects to turn around troubled neighborhoods through the Building Neighborhood Capacity Program (BNCP). Several local organizations partner with the City of Fresno to carry out projects through the grant.
"It's an acknowledgment that there are issues at the ground level that need to be addressed, that people need to be directly engaged in the neighborhood itself," says Eduardo Rodriguez, site director for the El Dorado Park BNCP.
Partners of the BNCP helped in the planning stages of the new San Ramon Apartments, although they are run through the Fresno Housing Authority, also a partner of the BNCP.
The apartments will be ready to lease to residents by mid-March.