The Transformation of Historic Downtown Fresno Building

Two local developers are giving new life to an old, forgotten warehouse in downtown Fresno’s Brewery District. The building is already at more than 70% capacity, partly thanks to low-cost rent, which is about $2 per square foot. The warehouse on Fulton Street was the Sun Stereo Warehouse in the 1970s and a hardware company in the early 1900s. It is now breathing a new life and will soon house dozens of creatives and small businesses in the Valley, like Bone Dry Sober Bar.

The bar’s owner, Ian Landis, is excited to be leasing the space for his pop-up store. 

“When you see this commercial area when it’s open, you won’t even know that it looks like any empty shell before,” Landis said. 

Landis calls it Central California’s first entirely non-alcoholic bar, serving mocktails, non-alcoholic wine and beer, and kombucha on tap.

A New “Entrepreneurial Playground”

Also referring to it as an entrepreneurial playground, Landi said it is a perfect spot for small businesses. Owners will have much freedom to customize and do everything they want with low rent. Aside from that, there are excellent teams of people to contact and help with everything they need. 

Source: Vintage Fresno https://www.facebook.com/vintagefresno

Sun Stereo Warehouse: Details

The building’s co-owner Jamin Brazil gave ABC30’s Action News a tour. They kept the building’s original brick wall and wooden ceilings. Below are the features and uses of the newly-renovated warehouse: 

• It has two floors and a basement. 
• Small retail shops will take the first floor while the second is modeled after tech center think tanks. 
• You can also rent a desk, private booth, or office for the day.
• There’s a spacious common area with a full-service kitchen where people can gather and share ideas.

Brazil shares, whether it’s here or other locations, and we believe that will have a huge impact, an exponential impact on the economy and the inhabitants for this area. “Our goal is that we will continue to see entrepreneurs, people that are starting small-to-medium sized businesses invest in downtown.”

The building is already at more than 70% capacity. Thanks to the low-cost rent of only about two bucks per square foot.

Christian Honetschlager hosts his No Life Fresno Podcast out of one of the office spaces in the Sun Stereo Warehouse. This space accommodates his business needs and also gives him a chance to grow his network. In two months of running the podcast in the transformed warehouse, he realized that the place helped fuel his ideas and other people’s views, too. “What a better place to be, than in the cultural and entrepreneurial and artistic hub of Fresno,” Honetschlager exclaimed. 

While they have started accommodating tenants since early May 2022, the official ribbon-cutting of the Sun Stereo Warehouse is slated for mid-July.

Here’s a short trivia: 

The Sun Stereo Warehouse is a two-part commercial block. It was initially designed to accommodate retail space on the ground floor and residences on the second. Listed in Fresno’s Local Register of Historical Resources, the name of this resource is taken from one of its more recent uses.

And for other news and stories, read more here at Owner’s Mag!