REPORT TO THE CITY COUNCIL
FROM: NICHOLAS D. MASCIA, PE, Assistant City Manager
Interim Director-Capital Projects Department
BY: FRANCISCO V. MAGOS II, PE, Assistant Director
Capital Projects Department, On-Site Project Management Division
DANIEL CARRION, PE, Licensed Professional Engineer
Capital Projects Department, On-Site Project Management Division
SUBJECT
Title
RESOLUTION – Naming the “Carnegie Library Garage”
Body
RECOMMENDATION
Staff recommends that Council adopt the Resolution naming the “Carnegie Library Garage”.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Per Resolution No. 2020 272, naming requests for City facilities must be reviewed by the Historic Preservation Commission (HPC) before going to City Council. The proposed parking garage at 1875 Merced Street, currently referred to as the “North Fulton Parking Structure,” received HPC approval on April 27, 2026, for the proposed name “Carnegie Library Garage.” Staff now seek Council approval to formally adopt this name in recognition of the Fresno’s Carnegie library that once occupied the site before its demolition in 1959.
BACKGROUND
The City of Fresno is constructing a new public parking structure at 1875 Merced St., a site of historic civic importance in Downtown Fresno bounded on the north by Tuolumne Street, on the west by Broadway Street, on the east by Congo Alley, and on the south by Merced Street. The site was most recently utilized as a surface parking lot but formerly was the site of Fresno’s Carnegie library, an early and significant public building that served the community for decades and represented a major investment in public education, literacy, and civic life.
Like many cities across the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Fresno benefited from the Carnegie library movement, which helped establish architecturally prominent public libraries as anchors of civic identity and community. In 1901, Fresno received a $30,000 grant from Andrew Carnegie to build a p...
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