Downtown Fresno bakery closes as rail construction hurts sales

The bakery inside Libelula on Broadway Street closed Sunday after Kimberly Cookson said declining business tied to nearby high-speed rail construction made it unsustainable. Libelula stayed open Tuesday through Sunday, but the bakery’s shutdown underscored how a major public works project has already changed the economics of downtown Fresno one storefront at a time.

Cookson said the problem was not the restaurant itself but the steady loss of customers around it. Earlier pressure had already cut into revenue by roughly 50% after the parking lot across the street closed, and Fresno Street was also set to close for about a year as part of rail-related work. For a bakery that depends on easy stops, nearby parking and regular foot traffic, that combination left little room to keep going.

The closure lands in the middle of a larger state rail buildout that officials continue to describe in expansive terms. California High-Speed Rail says 119 miles are under construction, more than 19,000 jobs have been created and the project has generated $24.6 billion in economic output. The agency also says more than 900 small businesses have been engaged in the program, a figure that captures the scale of the effort but does not erase the strain felt by businesses on Broadway and nearby streets.

In Fresno, the project has already produced visible changes. In March 2026, the authority announced completion of the Ventura Street underpass grade separation project, less than a mile from the future Fresno Station site. Officials say the underpass reconnects downtown to southwest Fresno and Chinatown, a reminder that the long-term promise of the rail line is meant to be more than a train platform.

The Fresno Station early works package shows how much is still coming. The contract calls for retrofitting and restoring the historic Fresno Depot, utility relocations, ADA improvements, plaza and park space, and station parking with EV charging. The work is estimated at about $50 million over two years.

For Cookson, though, the headline is simpler: a bakery closed because customers could not get in and out as easily as before. For downtown Fresno, the loss is another test of whether the benefits promised by high-speed rail can outweigh the immediate damage to merchants caught in the construction zone.