South Tower Community Land Trust

Our Community Land Trust...

Designs Community

Creates Public Art

Builds Power

Fosters Affordability

Prevents Displacement

Advocates for Parks

Uplifts Tenants

Removes Barriers

Is Queer

Confronts Inequity

South Tower CLT is a nonprofit that envisions a barrier free South Tower neighborhood, creatively building shared prosperity and health.

We achieve our mission by power building and stewarding economic resources to build community control of land, buildings, and civic resources centered in Fresno’s South Tower neighborhood in order to improve quality of life and prevent or reverse displacement of residents.

In the heart of Fresno’s Tower District, a beacon of hope and resilience has emerged in the form of the South Tower Community Land Trust.

Rami Zwebti, The kNOw Youth Media

Tower District future at stake in clash over decades-old industrial tensions in Fresno

A community group says it wants to protect neighborhood homes, but industrial interests say it could be bad for business.

Pablo Orihuela, Fresnoland

I think it’s time we center the conversation about Tower District’s neighborhood specific plan differently. It’s about time we look at historical redlining maps and acknowledge how the historical boundaries they outline continue to define our neighborhood today.

Jacob Bailey, Fresno Bee Letter

South Tower community advocates celebrated a significant victory recently after a key advisory committee recommended the City of Fresno eliminate industrial zoning in two key areas of one of the city’s oldest neighborhoods.

Pablo Orihuela, Fresnoland

Staff

Kiel Lopez-Schmidt

Kiel Lopez-Schmidt (he/they)

I am devoted to the neighborhood who helped raise me, where my creativity and passion were born. I grew up playing in Dry Creek Canal and riding bikes in the construction zone that would become the 180 freeway. When tragedy struck my family and I lost my father to AIDS in 1991, it was my mom and community that helped me continue to mourn and commit to fighting injustice.

I began learning architecture and anthropology at Fresno City while serving tables at Roger Rocka’s and Daily Planet. After completing my architecture education at UC Berkeley, I returned to continue serving the neighborhood. I’ve been able to do that through designing buildings like 541 @ South Tower, through serving on the Tower District Design Review Committee for 10 years, and through organizing for increased park access like Broadway Parque on the site of a former police station.

It was that on-the-ground work that inspired me to found the South Tower Community Land Trust so we can continue improving access to parks and affordable housing while also planning for the long term shared property and health of the neighborhood.

Germán Quinionez

Germán Quinionez (he/him)

The interconnectedness of disinvestment, racism, and geography is significant, in other words where I live matters. Whether right or wrong or indifferent, the physical environment of my upbringing has greatly influenced me. This awareness of inequality has motivated me to view neighborhoods in a distinct way, specifically in terms of changing the unjust systems that marginalize BIPOC communities through unfair and inequitable community development.

The systemic issues in Fresno's south neighborhoods have prompted me to dedicate my life to addressing social disparities that affect the most vulnerable populations. I have successfully integrated community-based planning to develop a neighborhood park in 2023 and have also led capacity-building efforts to support local non-profits in engaging more with civic infrastructure and community development. In my free time, I enjoy reading books, traveling, listening to 80-90's hip hop, getting tattoos, and spending time with family.

Board

Miguel Arambula

Miguel Arambula (he/him)

Hello, a little about me. I grew up on Bremer near Ted C. Wills and remember when the freeway construction came to the neighborhood. After traveling around, first as wannabe artist and later as international high school teacher, I realized a tree needs roots! During the day I work in affordable housing development at regional non-profit, Self-Help Enterprises. During the evening, I try and run some side developments like starting a downtown bar, McQueen’s, and starting outdoor farmer’s market and food truck bistro. I like to see people and places getting better, especially those people and places that are nearest and dearest. I would like to see South Tower build on its assets as a vibrant place with many reasonable housing options and lots of fun local businesses!

Casey Lauderdale

Casey Lauderdale (she/her)

Hi, I’m Casey. I’m a Fresno native and Tower has been a part of my life since I was a kid. From family gatherings to after-church chicken pie to teenage hangouts, growing up in the accepting and vibrant world of the Tower shaped me and gave me an appreciation for Fresno as a whole.

Today, I work in long-range planning for the City of Fresno, where I desire to help create neighborhoods where everyone has the resources they need to achieve self-actualization. I hope to see South Tower be a model of community power and ownership, where vibrancy is created through the self-determination of residents.

Jacob “Luffy” Bailey

Jacob “Luffy” Bailey (he/him)

Hello South Tower and beyond! My name is Jacob but I’m known locally as Luffy. I am a Fresno transplant and a kid who always wanted a garden.

Growing up as a poor kid bouncing from town to town and rental to rental is not conducive to putting down strong roots. When I rolled sweatily into Fresno in my broken down ‘91 Saturn for college, I never thought it would be the place I would wind up calling home, but my garden grew nevertheless.

It started with rooted cuttings in slum apartments owned by JD homes, propagated to guerilla gardening on the south side, and finally blossomed with the purchase of my first home in South Tower–a beautiful riot of plants that just so happens to have a little mediterranean bungalow in the center.

Now that I have my own garden, I want to make sure other folks get theirs too. With my friends at South Tower CLT, I think we can make that happen.

Alex Desiga

Alex Desiga (she/her)

Lios enchim aniavu! I am a dreamer who has been called naively hopeful, a creative who centers environmental sustainability, a sweet treat fiend, and a Fresnan who knows we have something special here.

Tower and Downtown Fresno are the playgrounds where I bike around with friends, supporting small businesses and musing about a Solar Punk future where our neighborhoods are truly community owned and designed.

Professionally I am a Human Centered Designer, that gets to collaborate with local, national and international entities to ensure community development systems and solutions are participatory in their creation and honor communities wholeness.

I do not believe in innovating for the sake of innovating. But I firmly believe that our community is our remedy, no one is coming to save us, and we are the collective power.

Jess Fitzpatrick

Jess Fitzpatrick (he/him/his)

Jess Fitzpatrick (he/him) was born in Fresno and raised in Clovis, CA and Identifies as a Queer Trans Man. He started his activism as a concessions volunteer at Reel Pride Film Festival when he was 21. He came out as a transgender man in 2011, after going to his first ever trans support group at Trans-E-Motion(TEM). He has worked tirelessly for the safety and protection of trans and gender non-conforming communities locally and abroad ever since.

He works as Fresno’s ”Tranager”. His duties include providing gender euphoric resource management and procurement including: one-on-one gender advising sessions, name and gender marker change assistance, managing the Trans Medical Needs Fund, facilitating the Trans and Gender Expansive peer support group, as well as creating and presenting LGBTQ+ Workplace competency workshops.

When he is not fighting unjust systems, he loves to sing and weightlift. He currently holds the 2023 title of Mztr. Gay Central Valley. He lives in Fresno’s Tower District for over 7 years with his partner Crow, their pet cat Pippin and guide dog Felice.

Edgar, Yania & Family

Edgar (he/him), Yania (she/her) & Family

Yania and Edgar hold the first family board seat at South Tower CLT. Edgar moved to Fresno from Mexico when he was five years old, and Yania moved to Los Angeles from Uruguay at thirteen years old.

What brought them together was a passion for serving their community at a community clinic and day laborer program in Oakland. Yania and Edgar now have two children and relocated to Fresno to be closer to family.

They landed in the South Tower neighborhood, where they enjoy walking to thrift stores and cafes, riding bikes with the kids, and strolling in the farmers market on Thursdays.

Edgar currently works as a drug and substance use disorder counselor and Yania works as a nurse in dialysis. They hope to support the building and growth of inclusive community spaces in the South Tower.

Stanley Beltran-Johnson

Stanley Beltran-Johnson (He/Him)

Southwest Fresno raised me. The impact Fresno has had on me has shaped how I see the world. Directly impacted by every obstacle known to black families such as substance abuse, homelessness and lack of access to equitable jobs. I have experienced them all.

Being homelessness several times in my life. The first was at the age of sixteen, so I intimately understand the importance of adequate housing. My grandfather used to call me "have mattress, will travel". Which means I will go if there is a bed and an opportunity.

Everytime I needed a restart I would always make my way back to Fresno which would motivate me and remind me of how resilient I am. I am a black queer gay man married to a Mexican migrant. Longing for a black queer community which I have found in every city I have lived except Fresno.

I am currently working for the only LGBTQ+ Resource Center in Fresno. While at the Resource Center I am seeing the same disparities that have plagued the black community, those same disparities are exacerbated in the queer black community.

Find a need and fill it, find a hurt and heal it. So I found BlaQueer which is a passion project that will elevate the queer black community in Fresno and the Central Valley. The work we are doing at South Tower CLT is finding holes in housing and providing Equitable solutions. Affordable housing as a basic human right.