Rendering reveal that Fresno’s City Center is taking a high-end approach to serving the homeless as well as families and children facing life challenges. Photo by Ben Hensley.

When people think of “homeless shelters,” images of pop-up tents, shopping carts and dirty jackets come to mind. For years, the term “shelter” has drawn a stigma that, while unfair in some regards, has been settled upon by many who continue to see the seemingly ever-growing issue as one of visual aesthetics, not of human suffering.

Matthew Dildine and the Fresno Mission hope to change that by opening the 180,000-square-foot City Center, a dignified space for those facing homelessness, domestic abuse, human trafficking and other life insecurities.

City Center is designed to be a “one-stop-shop” for individuals and families with children suffering from crisis events, offering up to 20 nonprofit organizations and a school onsite. Located at 2025 E. Dakota Ave, when completed, the center will also be able to house up to 72 families in residence buildings.

“We want to create the first of a series of co-located campuses and bring together these different partners,” Dildine said.

 

Community needs

Dildine and the Fresno Mission implemented a “wheel of need” in the homeless community, to detail the specific challenges that people suffering from homelessness face. This wheel includes criteria such as housing, employment and job skills, mental and physical health challenges and financial obstacles, among other challenges faced by the community.

When researching how to combat these issues, Dildine and the Fresno Mission discovered that both the orphan care and human trafficking wheels of need looked very similar to the homeless wheel of need.

“We look at this and see the person in the middle is changing but the needs are the same,” Dildine said. “Why does it make sense as a community if the needs are the same to build three or four different campuses that just do things OK, as opposed to one place that does things correctly.”

Dildine added that a majority of centers focus on the visible homeless population — the single, adult male.

“What’s happened while they’ve focused on that male — families have gotten lost,” Dildine said. “In 2019, we had more people coming to us with kids than without.”

With that in mind, Dildine and the Fresno Mission have designed City Center to meet the needs of the entire population of people suffering from life insecurity crises.

 

 

 

Dignity first 

With a focus on including services for all those suffering from life insecurity issues, Dildine hoped to design City Center with a more welcoming atmosphere than many other shelters.

“We really wanted to rethink what the front door for crisis looks like,” Dildine said. “Where do we like to go to find peace? Coffee shops and living rooms.”

Visitors to City Center will be welcomed with a coffee house-style entrance, complete with furniture, tables, and a “living room” atmosphere.

Coffee at the coffee house will be free, with the option for individuals to pay — a framework that is reflective of City Center’s mission to create a feeling of equality among those at the center.

 In addition to the coffee and dining areas, City Center will also offer everything from a salon and barber shop to a children’s daycare and education center, with services provided free of charge to individuals residing at the center.

City Center will also provide the First Fruits Market, a boutique, market-style, free-to-use grocery store, aiming to put dignity as a high priority.

The childcare center on-site features a large play area for children of parents at the center.

“One of the other things we really try to think through is what the child’s experience is when they’re coming in,” Dildine said. “Also, what does mom do when she wants to go to a class but has three kids or she wants to go talk to another adult and she doesn’t want to deal with her three kids? We wanted to design a place for those kids to go for an hour or two while mom takes a break.”

Aspen Charter School is located next door to the center and provides education for foster and homeless youth, with 68 identifying as homeless. Fresno Metro Ministries, Resiliency Center and other local nonprofits are also located next door to the City Center campus.

The center will also house a 5,000 square-foot vulnerable youth space to assist in children and youth cycling out of foster care and human trafficking.

“It’s basically an extra-safe drop-in center for vulnerable youth,” Dildine said. “It’s not just open to anybody — it’s going to have some levels of protection.”

Dildine said the added protected services will include everything from mental health and physical health services to sleeping quarters, recovery and rehabilitation services.

 

Benefiting nonprofits

With City Center’s focus on building resources for people facing life insecurity challenges, Dildine and the Fresno Mission aim to create a space that can accommodate as many nonprofit organizations as possible.

From a conference area on the first floor, to ample office space for on-site nonprofit groups handling everything from basic health needs to human trafficking, the center provides a unique space, bringing nonprofit organizations under the same roof — something Dildine said does not happen often in the nonprofit sector focusing on the needs that City Center will provide.

Dildine said that it is common for individuals to be bounced from office to office, often requiring time-restricting travel across the city or county to receive the resources they need.

“With more than 20 partners, we wanted to build a space that could help benefit all of our different nonprofits,” Dildine said. “It’s also that place where we [can] do movie nights with the kids.

 “I also think it’s really important for the dignity aspect,” Dildine said. “I always wanted to build a place where when they came they feel like, ‘I’m on my way up.’”

Dildine adds that the multipurpose use of some of the facilities will hopefully give the City Center a more “hospitality” focus than many other shelter spaces, with the facility housing everything from group meetings to nonprofit organization meetings and events.

“It’s kind of our goal to help advance nonprofits that are partnered with us,” Dildine said. “Everything is at reduced rent and reduced rate; because of the co-op, the shared spaces, they just don’t need as much space as you would normally.”

Dildine added that the nonprofits would be paying up to half as much as they previously would at other locations.

“We’re not necessarily rushing to fill every single space, because we want to grow into the need. There are still some spaces available,” Dildine said, adding that they are trying to fill spaces progressively based on the center’s needs.

 

Timeframe

With a soft opening scheduled for January, Dildine said that services will become available, including the First Fruits Market,

“None of this project is funded by the government at all, not one penny,” Dildine said. “It’s all donation, foundation, and we resolved the high-speed rail lawsuit and so some of the money is from the high-speed rail lawsuit.”

The Fresno Mission’s Downtown Fresno campus was displaced by the high-speed rail route.

The $30 million project, Dildine said, is greatly helped by the fact that it is funded via donation, saying that with government funding, the project would potentially surpass $60 to $70 million.

Donations from many organizations and individuals including Producers Dairy, JD Food, Isnardi Foundation, and the Rontell Family, as well as a $500,000 donation from Bank of America presented on Oct. 12, have helped fund the project.