Fresno officials consider fixes for teens' jaywalking near Fashion Fair Mall

Fresno officials are weighing fixes around Fashion Fair Mall as residents keep flagging the same hazard: a large hole in a median barrier that lets pedestrians, including teens, cut across busy lanes instead of taking the longer route to a crosswalk.

The city has received more than a dozen complaints in recent years about the opening near the mall, and the concern has sharpened because the same area has already seen deadly pedestrian crashes. A pedestrian was killed at East Shaw Avenue and First Street on Jan. 27, 2025, and another fatal collision was reported near the mall on May 3, 2024.

The complaints highlight a corridor problem, not just a behavior problem. The shortcut in the median barrier is drawing foot traffic that belongs to a retail center, while the surrounding roadway is built for fast-moving cars. That makes the gap in the barrier more than a nuisance: it becomes the point where mall trips, neighborhood walks and risky crossings collide.

Any physical repair would likely fall to the City of Fresno Public Works Department, which handles streets, sidewalks, traffic signals, streetlights and median islands. That gives the city several options, from closing the opening to reworking the median or changing nearby pedestrian access so people are not tempted to dart through traffic.

City leaders have dealt with Fashion Fair safety concerns before. In March 2022, Mayor Jerry Dyer and Police Chief Paco Balderrama met with Fashion Fair management after a series of violent incidents and discussed added police presence, bike patrols and access to mall camera feeds. Dyer said then that the city could put three officers there soon, while Balderrama said roughly 600,000 people visit the mall each month and very few incidents occur.

The mall remains on the city’s public-safety radar. In late April, Fresno police warned of a possible social-media takeover event at Fashion Fair Mall and said officers would be on site in increased numbers and working with mall security. That extra patrol response underscores how often the mall area draws city attention, even as the deeper question remains whether the street design itself is steering pedestrians into danger.

For Fresno County, the issue at Fashion Fair is now clear: the safest answer may have less to do with scolding teens than with fixing the place where the sidewalks, the mall, the buses and Shaw Avenue stop lining up.