Chinatown is likely to get even less oriental with the proposed sale of the Fresno Buddhist Church at 1340 Kern St., listed with Colliers International for $1.1 million.
The Fresno brokerage said the 2.11 acre property, which is on Fresno’s Local Register of Historic Resources, was listed last month and has had one interested party take a look so far.
Agent Mike Ryan with Colliers said the sale will be “an interesting challenge” because of the building’s “special nature” and the state of the commercial real estate market, which is slowly recovering from the recession.
“The outside cannot be touched or altered, but a new buyer could come in and rehab the interior for an office use,” Ryan said. “They’ve got their altar upstairs, they’re likely going to want to take that with them to the new church. That’s part of their religion.”
The church’s new base is 2720 E. Alluvial Ave. in Clovis, next to the Unitarian Universalist Church of Fresno. Cliff Osaki, president of the board for the Buddhist entity’s d.b.a., Fresno Betsuin Buddhist Temple, said a Family Dharma Center was built at the new property and hosts most current services.
An upcoming building phase would include new offices and a temple but comes with a projected $4 million price tag, roughly the amount that the initial phase cost.
“The first phase is free and clear,” Osaki said. “We’re starting from scratch on the temple side.”
He said the congregation, which has about 800 members plus their children, contributed about half of the phase one cost, while fundraising and the sale of an investment property added the rest.
The church hosts an annual food bazaar in September and its Obon Festival, usually the first weekend in July, with lanterns, taiko drumming and kimonos aplenty.
Osaki said the relocation drive began in the late ’90s “to move out where the families were. Our members moved east. That’s who we’re trying to serve.”
Part of the intent to sell the old building, which still hosts an occasional memorial ceremony, is to raise funds for the phase two construction, he said. “We hate to sell it of course, but we need to kind of move forward.”
The church incorporated in 1901 and dedicated a wooden temple the following year at the Kern Street site, but a fire claimed it in 1919.
Karana Hattersley-Drayton, Fresno’s historic preservation project manager, said a pair of architects from San Francisco, Toykichi Kurashi and William C. Hays, designed the current building that arose in 1920.
The City Council put the building on the local historic register in 1979.
“It’s really a crown jewel of Fresno,” Hattersley-Drayton said. “It really should be on the National Historic Register.”
Although she said a church’s altar is usually consecrated at a fixed site, officials will not interfere with the congregation’s removing items from the hondo, the worship hall on the third story.
“It’s their altar,” she said, although “it’s really part of the church or temple. It’s a little delicate. The city won’t oppose them taking things the congregation constructed for worship.”
Osaki said the ornate bell tower in front of the building and a Buddha statue in the hondo will move to the new property. A nearly 12,400-square-foot meeting hall annex built in 1961 is part of the sale package.
The temple building is nearly 11,800 square feet and is one of the few icons left to evoke an Asian flavor in the neighborhood, save for an oriental alleyway balcony, the Komoto Department Store building and a few more odds and ends.
“Pretty much the only Japanese-based things left there are Central Fish Co. and a confectionery store,” Osaki said of the neighborhood. “They call it Chinatown, but it really isn’t what it was.”
Ryan said Colliers has notified fellow local commercial brokerages of the property’s availability and sent targeted mailers to clients and developers. Next up is a marketing mailer to downtown property owners.
“The zoning allows quite a few uses for it because of the historical nature of it,” he said of the old church. “It’s a good piece of real estate, well located.”