Employment Attorney in Fresno, CA

After years of negotiations, a developer hoping to build estates on an old San Joaquin River golf property will cede some of the land to build a public path for people to access the water.

In a deal reached last month, Fig Garden Investments, which bought the shuttered Fig Garden Golf Course in 2019, agreed to allow the creation of a 50-foot-wide easement along the property’s northern edge, near the river. The roughly 4,696-foot-long path will connect to Van Ness Road and “open to the public immediately,” the agreement says.

The firm will also pay $451,980 to the State Land Commission’s Kapiloff Land Bank Fund as part of the deal. The state fund helps provide public access to lands managed by the commission, according to its website.

The new path through the old Fig Garden golf property will add to the short list of places on the San Joaquin River west of Highway 41 in Fresno that are truly accessible to the public.

The settlement materialized after the state declared its legally-established rights to riverside space rather than purchasing private land from willing sellers.

“We didn’t have much choice,” Ben Ewell, a Fresno attorney representing Fig Garden Investments, said of the settlement.

It came down to the state’s and the public’s rights on the land between the river and the low and high water marks on its floodplains.

After operating for nearly 60 years, the Fig Garden Golf Course closed at the end of 2018, citing a decline in profits. Fig Garden Investments, owned by Central Valley nut farmer Larry Freels, bought the 140-acre property in 2019 and submitted an application with Fresno County in 2020 to rezone the land into seven 20-acre estates.

That’s when the State Lands Commission took notice.

The state agency, which has jurisdiction over California’s rivers, determined about 17.6 acres on the golf course adjacent to the San Joaquin River were state land. The commission also determined about 30.5 acres spread across the property were subject to public easement requirements.

John Shelton, an environmental scientist and former executive director of the San Joaquin River Conservancy, said this is because everything between the river and its low water mark belongs to the state, per California law. The conservancy is also a state agency, but it is specifically tasked with creating the public San Joaquin River Parkway in the 22 miles between Friant Dam and Highway 99 in the Fresno-Madera area.

Shelton added that everything between the low water mark and the high water mark is subject to public easement requirements, even if it’s private property.

“If you own that property, you have to allow people to use it to access the river,” he said of the the parts of the land that are subject to public easement requirements.

Shelton said the commission sought those concessions during its negotiations with the development firm at the conservancy’s request.

“We want access to the river,” Shelton said. “I threw out a couple other wishes. But the main thing was to consolidate what was the state land and what was public trust access.”

Ewell, the Fig Garden Investments attorney, said the developer didn’t attempt to fight the state — though he pointed out the land’s previous owner paid property taxes for almost 60 years that included space now claimed by the state.

“We had reasonable negotiations over the years, it just took a long time,” Ewell said. “There’s all kinds of questions about the validity of the state’s sovereign land claims. But to avoid years of litigation, we came to a mutual agreement.”

The mutual agreement places the public easement between the sovereign land adjacent to the river and the golf property’s northern edge, so it does not cut across the owner’s land.

The 140-acre golf property has lost some of its land to the state as a result of the deal.

But Ewell said the developer is still hoping to rezone the old course into seven estate parcels, though they each would likely be smaller than 20 acres.

The idea to build homes on the San Joaquin River’s floodplains has faced strong opposition in the past. The backlash to a proposal in the 1980s to develop homes and a golf course on the Ball Ranch property — now owned by the conservancy and operated as a public space — eventually birthed the idea for a San Joaquin River parkway.

Ewell said the homes his client is hoping to build on the old Fig Garden golf property would have a “very moderate impact.”

“We’re not seeking to rezone to multi-family or very intense housing, we’re not talking 50 houses here,” he said. “And there’s a lot of other houses along the river at different locations, so it seems to be a pretty good use of the property.”

Shelton, the former conservancy executive director, said he would prefer the whole property be open space, but at least public access to the water has been secured.

“There might be a gated community in there one day,” he said, “but you will have ways to get into the river, which I think is going to be very important.”

Reality Check is a Fresno Bee series holding those in power to account and shining a light on their decisions. Have a tip? Email [email protected].

It has more people than Miami and a larger land area than Tampa, Florida.

Just how big is Fresno? And what makes Central Valley city one of the fastest growing metropolitan areas in California?

The Fresno Bee looked at data from the U.S. Census Bureau and other sources to see how Fresno compares to other California cities.

Here is what we found out:

Fresno had an estimated population of 550,105 people as of July 1, 2024, according to Census data.

That’s an increase of 1.5% from April 2020, when Fresno had an estimated 542,235 residents, the Census Bureau reported.

The Fresno metro area saw a population boost of about 2% over the same period, Census data show, growing from 1,166,047 residents in 2020 to 1,189,557 in 2024.

Between 2023 and 2024, the Fresno metro area’s population grew by about half a percentage point, The Sacramento Bee previously reported.

In comparison, Miami had an estimated population of 487,014 people in 2024, and Atlanta had a estimated population of 520,070 residents, according to Census data.

According to World Population Review, Fresno ranked among the 35 most populated cities in the nation in 2025.

According to California Demographics, Fresno ranked among the top five largest cities in California in terms of population.

Los Angeles had an estimated population of 3.8 million residents as of July 2024, according to the Census Bureau.

San Diego had approximately 1.4 million residents, Census data show, and an estimated 977,368 people were living in San Jose.

According to Census data, San Francisco had a total of 827,526 residents in July 2024.

In terms of population size, Fresno outpaced Sacramento, which had 535,798 residents, the Census Bureau said.

The city of Fresno spanned a total of 115.18 square miles of land area in 2020, the most recent data available, according to the Census Bureau.

That’s roughly one square mile more than Tampa, Florida, and five square miles larger than Orlando.

Fresno County was the sixth largest county in California in terms of land area with 5,958.6 square miles, the Census Bureau said.

According to the Census Bureau, Los Angeles was one of the biggest cities in California in terms of land area, covering a total of 469.49 square miles in 2020.

San Diego spanned a total of 325.88 square miles, Census data show, while California City covered 203.61 square miles and San Jose covered 178.26 square miles.

In terms of land area, the city of Fresno was significantly larger than its neighbors in the Central Valley.

The city of Sacramento covered 98.61 square miles in 2029, and the city of Modesto spanned 43.05 square miles.

According to experts, factors that attract people to Fresno include its top-tier schools, quality health care and relatively low cost of living.

Fresno ranked No. 6 on a list of the Most Affordable Places to Live in California in 2025, according to Extra Space Storage, a Salt Lake City-based storage company.

As of Monday, June 16, the average Fresno home was valued at $392,447, an increase of less than 1% from the previous year, according to real estate website Zillow.

That’s more than $579,000 less than the median value of a home in Los Angeles — $970,969 — and about $716,000 less than the median home value in San Francisco, $1,295,237, Zillow said.

In addition, Fresno neighbors one of the highest rated cities in the region: Clovis.

The city of Clovis took the top spot on Niche’s list of Best Places to Live in the Fresno Area in 2024, and was named one of the 50 Safest and Most Affordable U.S. Cities to Live by personal finance website GoBankingRates.

Clovis also ranked among the Top 100 Best Places to Live in the US in 2025, according to Livability.com, an online resource aimed at helping small and mid-size cities, states and regions attract and retain residents and businesses.

This story was originally published June 18, 2025 at 5:00 AM.

Need to do some last-minute Memorial Day shopping in Fresno?

Some local businesses will close during Memorial Day, while others will observe special holiday hours.

Here’s a list of what is open and closed in the Fresno area on Monday, May 26 — from grocery stores and pharmacies to banks — as confirmed by The Fresno Bee. Holiday hours can differ by location.

Be sure to check with your local store before heading out.

Here’s which local grocery stores will be open and closed in Fresno on Monday, May 26, for Memorial Day:

Aldi: Open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday.

Costco: Closed on Monday.

Food 4 Less: 5 a.m. to midnight Monday.

Foods Co.: Open 6 a.m. to midnight Monday.

FoodMaxx: Open 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday.

Fresno Community Market: Open 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday.

Grocery Outlet: Open 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday.

Save Mart: Open 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. Monday.

Smart and Final: Open 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday.

Trader Joe’s: Open 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday.

Vallarta Supermarkets: Open 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday.

Ventura Supermarket: Open 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday.

Vons: Open 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. Monday.

Whole Foods: Open 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday.

WinCo Foods: Open 24 hours on Monday.

Target: Open 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday

Here’s when local pharmacies are open and closed for Memorial Day on Monday:

CVS: Store open 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday; pharmacy open 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Rite Aid: Store open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday; pharmacy open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Walmart: Store open 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. Monday; pharmacy open 9 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Walgreens: Store open 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday; pharmacy closed.

Most stores at Fresno’s River Park Shopping Center will be open on Monday, Memorial Day, according to its website.

Fashion Fair in Fresno will also be open on Monday for the holiday.

Several Fresno-area government offices, including post offices and public libraries, and most banks are closed on Monday for Memorial Day.

Commercial package delivery companies UPS and FedEx will also be closed on Monday.

Flip the Script is a Bee series that challenges negative stereotypes (with the help of readers) by highlighting Fresno's remarkable assets and culture. Have a tip? Email [email protected].

Fresno is a place of archetypes.

There are the natives; those born and bred with Valley roots. These are families, known and not, with ties that go back generations. See: the Pardinis and their restaurant empire.

There are the boomerangs; those who left Fresno (for greener pastures, imagined or real) only to return. Kopi Sotiropulos is famously a boomerang. He left to Los Angeles in 1977 and spent the bulk of the 1980s as a working actor before returning to Fresno and becoming the well-known TV personality he is today.

Note: There is a subcategory of Boomerangs who have left and returned more than once. It is something that happens often enough to have its own name (on Reddit, at least). It’s called the Fresno curse.

There are tourists; both figurative and literal. These are the ones who are just passing through and who, for better or worse, see the area with an outsider’s eyes.

And then, there are the transplants; those who came to the area and found it agreeable enough to stay and put down roots.

Earlier this year, The Fresno Bee asked readers to share their stories as part of a reporting project aimed at changing the narrative around what it means to live in Fresno. Here are three transplants on why they moved to the area — and why they’ve stayed.

Steve Skibbie moved to Fresno with no intention of staying long.

Nearly 40 years later, he’s still here, and happily.

“I’ve seen this hundreds of times,” says Skibbie, a professional photographer and production specialist for the Fresno County Superintendent of Schools. People say they’ll only be in Fresno for a year or two, “and then they get sucked into the community.”

“They may not even like Fresno,” he says, “but they love the community.”

Skibbie came to Fresno from Oregon in 1987. He had just gotten out of military service and wanted to be a photojournalist. The program at Fresno State came highly recommended. So much so, that Skibbie drove down and camped out in the parking lot of the Joyal Administration building to get a jump on introducing himself around the journalism department.

He knew, almost immediately, that he had chosen the right place.

“I came to Fresno and I liked it. It just hit me right.”

The frat guys during his freshman orientation that first week of school, they didn’t have much to good to say about the city, Skibbie says. It was, “avoid south of Shaw, avoid downtown.”

Skibbie didn’t take that advice. He started venturing around those parts of town, where he found some great architecture. But he really discovered the city with his then-girlfriend (eventual wife). They were running a book club for kids who lived in the motels along Broadway Avenue. Skibbie found there a group of people who seemed to get a bad wrap “because they were poor and lived in a neighborhood that nobody liked.”

“We really just kind of decided that we were going to live downtown,” he says.

For a time, Skibbie and his wife lived as part of a Christian ministry at the Pink House, a fourplex apartment building on L street near the First Presbyterian Church.

In 1998, they became homeowners.

They were one of several families that moved into the Lowell neighborhood, a mostly forgotten collection of homes tucked between Tower District and downtown proper. The neighborhood was one of Fresno’s first subdivisions and as such includes mansions, but also mid-sized homes, bungalow courts and apartments. The Skibbies bought and renovated a 100-year old home, where they lived and raised their children.

There was a moment, early on when Skibbie thought about leaving Fresno. His parents tried to lure him back to Oregon with a job opportunity, and his wife was ready to go. He applied for the job and interviewed, “and failed,” he says.

His daughter and son-in-law recently moved into the family home, which allowed Skibbie and his wife to “retire” into a loft apartment inside the Pacific Southwest Building.

His daughter is a now boomerang, who returned from a stay in Florida, because Fresno is still a place to get your feet on the ground after school, Skibbie says. The city did rank in the top 10 on a list of the most affordable places to live the state, according to one survey.

Like Skibbie, Paula Castadio, moved to Fresno in the late ’80s to attend Fresno State.

She was a California native and from the Valley; raised just up Highway 99 in the city of Atwater. The counselors at her high school must have had some kind of deal with the university, she says, because “they didn’t really share any other options.”

Plus, her brother was already a student there and that helped in the decision making process.

After graduation, she met her husband, Richard, and began a career that included a long stint with Valley Public Television (where she served as the president and CEO for a decade) and a shorter one at Fresno State. She now works as a consultant.

But there was something else going on.

“I developed a heart for the community,” Castadio says.

“Once you start connecting with the people here, it does tether you,” she says.

“I continue to be touched by that.”

She can point to any number of organizations that are working hard for the good of the community; Cradle to Career, the Fresno Business Council, Central Valley Community Foundation and it’s Drive initiative, which has advocated for $4.2 billion in new development over the next decade. There’s also new investments in art through Measure P, which Castadio calls hugely transformative for Fresno and our mindset.

“That will make this an even more attractive place to live,” she says.

Of course, for Castadio, Fresno has never been short of appeal.

There’s a mix of people and cultures here, and a good cost of living compared to the available quality-of-life activities. The city’s centralized location also puts one in proximity to most places in the state, which is important for the Castadios. They travel up in Napa to see her parents and to the Central Coast. That’s where they spend much of their off time.

Not that they haven’t given thought to other places, or pictured where they might end up if they weren’t here.

“We do the Google search. And we always come back to Fresno,” Castadio says.

“It is a great place to live based on all the factors I can think of.”

For Timothy McCollum and his wife Carol there were two factors that led them to Fresno.

“There was what we wanted to avoid and what we wanted to achieve,” says McCollum a retired lawyer who sold his home in Southern California to move to the foothills northeast of Fresno in October of 1990.

He grew up in Los Angeles.

“I just didn’t want to live long enough to die in Los Angeles.”

The couple looked at cities up and down the state, “from San Diego to Sacramento,” before settling on 40 acres of raw cattle land near Tollhouse.

There, they found a place with clean water and cleaner air, no noise or light pollution. “And,” McCollum jokes, “there were no chemical plants up gradient from us.”

McCollum worked in environmental law.

The property allowed them to have horses, which the couple kept until they got to old to ride, and raise longhorn cattle. They had 22 at the height of things, including a somewhat famous sire bull.

Now they’re down to five.

McCollum commuted into Fresno for work, where there was access to a federal courthouse. That access was an important piece of why McCollum chose the area.

But among out of town lawyers, there was a certain stigma in being from Fresno. “Nothing original was ever created in Fresno, legally,” he says.

One could use that to their advantage.

Now, in his 80s, McCollum is officially retired. But the couple still makes it down into Fresno a few times a week and is happy with their decision to move.

“It’s been wonderful,” he says.

“We’re delighted to be here.”

McCollum actually first shared his thoughts on Fresno with The Bee back in 1998 as part of a series of stories on the Valley’s image. He was one of hundreds who filled out a 46-question survey.

At the time, he called the city “a wonderful place to live,” with one major exception.

“The one great lack in Fresno is leadership,” he said.

“With the current leadership, Fresno is doomed to be a branch office location for distant corporations. If it’s lucky.”

Triple-digit temperatures are headed to the Fresno area for the first time in 2025, according to the National Weather Service.

The weather agency recently issued an extreme heat watch for Fresno and the rest of the Central Valley.

“(Maximum temperatures) will rise well above normal, with highs up to 105 degrees, and lead to major heat risk,” the weather agency wrote in an X post. “This level of heat can cause heat-related illnesses for much of the population.”

“This is our first major heat event of the year,” National Weather Service meteorologist Stephen McCoy told The Fresno Bee, describing it as the “driving factor” behind the extreme heat watch. “This is the first time we’re seeing these kind of temperatures this year.”

Strong winds and low humidity could result in a “minor fire risk” for Fresno and much of the Central Valley, according to the weather service said via X.

The National Weather Service recently issued its first fire weather watch of the season.

Here’s what to know:

The extreme weather watch will remain in effect from 11 a.m. Friday, May 30, and it’s going to run until 7 a.m. Sunday, June 1, according to the National Weather Service.

According to the weather service, the extreme weather watch affects the San Joaquin and Kern River valleys as well as the lower Sierra Nevada foothills.

That includes the cities of Fresno, Bakersfield, Coalinga, Lemoore, Madera, Merced, Mariposa, Porterville, Sanger, Selma, Tulare and Visalia.

Lake Isabella and Yosemite Valley will also be affected, McCoy said.

The area that will be most affected by hot weather will be the West Side Hills, according to McCoy.

“Fresno County and western Kings County has the highest percentages for these temperatures,” he said.

On Friday, Fresno has a 15% chance of experiencing a maximum temperature greater than 105 degrees, the weather service said in an X post.

That chance will increase to 40% on Saturday, the weather agency said.

“Warmer temperatures will result in drier conditions across Central California, particularly in the San Joaquin Valley, southern Sierra foothills, Kern County mountains and West Side Hills,” the weather service said in an X post.

The relative humidity could drop to 15% to 20% in valley areas, McCoy said.

The Fresno area was expected to see sunny skies on Tuesday with a high temperature near 90 and an overnight low temperature around 63, according to the National Weather Service’s latest seven-day forecast.

Wednesday will be sunny with a high near 95 and an overnight low temperature around 63.

Thursday will have a high near 94 and an overnight low around 66 with wind gusts as high as 20 mph according to the weather service.

Friday will be the first day with triple-digit temperatures, with a high near 103 and an overnight low around 73.

Saturday will be sunny and hot with a high of 106 and an overnight low around 72, the weather service said.

Sunday will see a dip in temperatures. The high will be near 97, and the low could drop to around 63 at night.

Monday will be sunny with a high near 86.

Vulnerable individuals include those who are pregnant, newborns, children, older adults and those with chronic illnesses.

These groups are more at risk due to age and conditions that make it difficult to regulate high temperatures.

During the heat wave, people should “stay hydrated, wear lightweight, light-colored clothing (and) avoid outdoor activities during the warmest part of the day,” the mid-afternoon, McCoy said.

“Drink plenty of fluids, stay in an air-conditioned room, stay out of the sun, and check up on relatives and neighbors,” the weather service said in its extreme heat watch.

McCoy advised using air conditioning at night as well as during the day.

“Do not leave young children and pets in unattended vehicles,” the weather service warned. “Car interiors will reach lethal temperatures in a matter of minutes.”